bleeding heart instinct

[Yarden Oren <>]

Heard a distress call from the front yard and rushed out to see. 2-3 magpies were pecking at an immature blackbird, already badly wounded and screaming. Instinctively I chased the magpies away. then thought, why? moved away and the magpies went back to the victim.

I went indoors, thinking about my reaction. Magpies do engage in killing and feeding on birds when they can, the blackbird is an introduced species, if it were a sparrowhawk killing a crested pigeon on my front lawn I would not have reacted the same, I would just let it be.

A few minutes later, I observed from the obscurity of my window, a neighbour rushing to the event, chasing the magpies away, picking the wounded blackbird and taking it home with her.

Aye, we are strange animals.