Common Koel, Dollarbird, magpies and currawong song: GBS [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

["martin butterfield" <>]

I think the view that magpies will not attack when a person is facing them is erroneous.  While they usually attack from behind I have known them to adopt an Exocet philosophy and come straight in at the face at head height.  A renowned proponent of this technique used to haunt the cycle path near the Golden Gate Bridge between Bruce and Aranda and remdered the path unusable for about a month each year. 

 

We wondered why we got swooped by our local Magpies for a while.  Then a bit of detailed study found that the target zone was the intersection of two magpie nesting territories and one pied currawong nesting territory.  Anything that ventured in there got hammered.  Fortunately the clutch of the more aggresive pair of magpies have now fledged and things seem to have settled down.

 

Martin
 

On 10/25/07, Whitworth, Benjamin - BRS <> wrote:

Yesterday morning I had a dollarbird at my GBS site in Hawker and on Tuesday morning had a Common Koel and about 50 silvereyes flew through from the N East heading South West. A couple of weeks ago I had a noisy friarbird.

Other than that my recording of new GBS species has been minimal recently.

This may be due in part to a super aggressive magpie that swoops me as soon as I get out into the front yard. I haven't been seriously swooped since I was 16, but this bird swoops me even when I am looking directly at it (highly unusual)! I think it got very angry that I was focussing on its nest with my binoculars- trying to see inside the nest. It doesn't seem to swoop anyone else, and it has made surveying my GBS site dangerous and miserable over the past 2 weeks.

Last Thursday, a currawong in our yard gave the chuck wee call from 4:30 am to 6:45pm, every 10 seconds. I think this is the call John Leonard heard although disagree with Geoffrey, I think it is a different call. After over 14 hours of constant calling, very loudly, I wish I had a gun, either to kill the bird or myself- I had such a headache. The call continued in my head for quite a while after the bird stopped. When it started up again the next morning I was not happy. But, by the next day most of the currawongs had left. I have recorded 22-28 currawongs in my GBS site for the past 3 or so months. But numbers are now only about 5 or 6.

 

Benj Whitworth.

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