Magpies are in the news again. It's hatching time, & some are again swooping. Some small kids are carrying injuries.

There is talk from city councilors about relocating the worst offenders, which is kind of stupid---again. More woke rubbish in fact. I don't know how difficult it is to catch a cock bird, but I doubt it would be easy without injury to the bird.

Of course it wouldn't matter much, as any relocation would be into another flocks territory, result in fighting & probably the death of the relocated. It wouldn't be the only death. The hen bird alone would be unable to provide enough food for her chicks, so more deaths, & would be unable to defend her territory alone anyway.

Meanwhile we have no magpie problem, although our cock is an extremely bad tempered & aggressive bird. He even attacks the flock of lorikeets that come in daily, looking for a handout.

You see we feed our magpies at this time of year, only a little, but they know a good thing when they see it. I keep a little good beef, cut up small for them to feed the chicks. They wait by the glass back door, & land on the arm of my chair as I come out each morning, to take their reward for good behavior.

It would be very easy for councils to use a little mince for these mostly park homed maggies to be turned from dive bombers to allies, removing grubs & grass hoppers from our gardens.

Perhaps such a solution is too simple, or the greenies would not approve.

Apparently magpies can recognise a number of people. I don't know if that means they will leave the people they recognise alone, or they are the ones they go for. Feeding is a good idea, hasbeen.

In the meantime time, they are doing what they have always done, and their beautiful, unique warble makes up for a short period of swooping. Except for the recent case of the death of a baby and the occasional loss of an eye, of course. Big hat, and waving your arms around is the best defence.

I too feed them, though never good beef.

There are two flaws in your suggestion, though:
Firstly, feeding them stops them swooping the person who feeds them, but doesn't prevent them swooping anyone else.
Secondly, the more they're fed, the more their numbers increase.

I took a picture of a heap of them at my place about 12 months ago.
I counted about 40 of them, many of them young still with grey feathers.
We don't have so many now, every so often I'll see one out the front, cleaned up by a truck by the side of the main road.
- But we've still got maybe 15 - 20.

Once you feed them, they will never leave you alone.
We give them dry dog biscuits and sometime old mince from the freezer.
I've never gotten one to land on my arm, but you can hand feed some of them, if your patient.

One of them I named him Jeffrey.
If you left the door slightly open, he'd come straight in from the garage into the loungeroom.
He was smart enough to know that once he got in, I'd have to get food to lure him out.
Poor things gone now though, he must've flown too low near one of our side fences and got his beak caught in the old mesh.
My housemate found him a day or so later hanging from the fence, feathers everywhere.

I had a magpie funeral and all the other magpies turned out.

Hi Hasbeen,

I loved our maggies at our old house.
And yes we did feed them - mainly
egg-loaf bread that I used to shred
into small pieces and toss the small
bits out on the front lawn. There were
only a few of them and they would come
running up to me and talk to me.

They never swooped. And were always friendly.
I miss them. As does my husband. We took turns
in feeding them.

Hasbeen- This isn't a position I would have expected from you. Kudos. I think of you as a Libertarian- interesting. In a sense this is the human prejudice we have- anthroparchy- which is intensified by Locke Liberalism "Freedom" which seems to be embodied by control over the environment- in this case the magpies. I agree with you leave the maggies alone.