When my wife cuts the kids hair in the backyard in winter we do not bother to clean it up because within a couple of days the magpies normally do the job for us. It's kind of recycling without the transportation overheads and we can see its going to a good home.
I know that it must be peak of the nesting at the moment because on Sunday the we had 1 of 2 different magpies snapping it up as soon as it hit the ground. There were no squabbles at all and we thought they must be a pair but a Google search suggests that only the females build nests. Search also suggested that magpies are territorial in groups rather than pairs which may also explain the amicable resource sharing.
Is two females from the same territorial group a likely explanation or would I be telling my kids that "Emperor Nasi Gorang built the great wall of China to keep the rabbits out?"
