for interest only - interesting behaviour in a magpie in NZ

[sandra henderson <>]

I've been doing some volunteer indexing of an NZ bird journal, and came across what I thought was a really interesting observation note. Aust magpies were introduced to NZ in around 1870. A couple adopted an abandoned magpie chick in 1995 near Feilding on the North Is. The bird displayed serious alarm when a large lolly snake appeared, courtesy of a visiting child. The species in NZ has not seen snakes for well over 100 yrs - and nothing but imitation snakes elicited the same alarm response.

If you want to read the item, the article can be found at http://notornis.osnz.org.nz/system/files/Notornis_45_4_269.pdf (you need to scroll down about half way on first page to get to the start of this item).

 

sandra h