The Penguin Poop

Have you ever seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie….The Birds?  I saw it when I was very young without my parents knowledge (they would never have let me watch it). I had nightmares for years and recently I got a flashback of that movie when I turned around and saw this at my back door, LOL.  You might want to click on the photo to see them better.  OR NOT!

This is just one family of magpies, sometimes we have up to four families of them in our yard at one time. Our dog and two cats don’t seem to mind them either,.. they all just lay around watching these birds walk around them. The magpies are annoyed that the dog and cats are in the yard though and squawk loudly warning of danger,.. yeah as if our cats could be bothered getting up from the warm footpath to chase a big black bird. Phrrrrt!

You may already know that magpies make an awesome warble sound, and three of four times a day during some months.. they would come up to the back door like this (just a few feet from the flyscreen door)and all burst into song. It’s beautiful and it sounds like they’re inside the house.  As a matter of fact,.. we have to keep the door closed because we have had them wander on in. They even tap on the windows,.or the flyscreen door if I’m not quick enough to come feed them and their babies.  A few weeks ago, I was throwing their food onto the trampoline (so the dog doesn’t eat it) and magpies came running…. yes running  (a couple flew in,.. but most of them ran) in from the nature reserve..from every direction and squeezed through the bars in the fence you can see back there. It was amazing and a bit freaky.. these birds are quite large and do swoop during breeding season… but they leave us alone I guess because we have been feeding their babies every year for about 10 years. Even so,.. I admit I got a wave of panic when that happened…like they were all coming to attack me,lol.  ‘The Birds’ again probably… but also I had been attacked lots of times by magpies when I was young and I know how fierce they can be.  We have two adult magpies that will allow us to hand feed them, and I suspect these two are the same ones that come back year after year with new babies. Perhaps the others are babies from past years,.I don’t know…they all look so much alike wwhaahahahaahaha.  But I can recognise two of them easily.

Anyhoo…. you’re probably wondering why I titled this post ‘Penguin Poop’.  Well one day… I had just fed the magpies and they were still enjoying their snack as I wandered back inside,..a few minutes later,..my 12yr old daughter raced inside, all excited, grabbed her camera and ran outside again.  She lined the camera up on the edge of the trampoline and I thought….’nice..she’ll get us some lovely close-up shots of the magpies’.  I yelled out to her, asking if she was getting nice close-up shots of the magpies and she yelled back,… "No I’m taking photos of a PENGUIN!!!!"

Here is her Penguin. Cute isn’t it?
 

You might want to click on this photo to enlarge it and see more detail,. erm …or perhaps NOT. Do you think I need to be worried about my daughter? She thought this was fantastic…way better than close-ups of magpies whaahaahahahaha.

Needless to say…. feeding the magpies comes at a poopy price which requires regular cleaning up to remove penguins,.. and other not-so cute ‘gifts’.