I have previously mentioned my practice of feeding the local
pair of nesting magpies with pieces of ‘steakette’ from Hawke’s Butchery at the
Fishwyck markets. Frequently when one of the pair comes strutting up for
its steakette miniportion it will carry a previously collected prey item that
it drops at my feet. Whether this is intended as exchange or as a
demonstration of the poverty of the immediate foraging area in suitable tucker
for young maggies I do not know. This morning the discarded item was a
small spider which I offer for the spider expert to identify. Perhaps the
Common Tablelands Brown? Its only distinctive feature was the pattern
under the abdomen.
