Hi all,
With violent rain storms penetrating my dining room ceiling, closing the
Geelong to Melbourne Rd and turning the normally dry western plains sheep
paddocks into prime snipe habitat we headed out last Saturday through
numerous rain squalls, heading for a pelagic trip out of Port Macdonnell in
S A. Sadly the wind and rain persisted and by 0800 on Sunday the pelagic was
declared a non-event.
Not all was bad though. I found that the little bakery in Dunkeld houses one
of the world’s great meat pie makers and that one of the best mimics lives
close by. With my meat pie in hand we stopped for lunch at the local Lion’s
Park, just on the west side of Dunkeld, and were serenaded by a local Magpie
who went through a large repertoire of calls.
I had never heard the mimicry skills of the Magpie and, after visiting that
font of all videos, You-tube, where a number of Magpies pretend to mimicry,
I still have not heard anything to compare with this particular bird. The
calls though soft, were as pure as a true Magpie dawn-song and 100% accurate
to their origin.
We were offered Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, Pied Currawong, human voices,
a dog barking, Kookaburra, some small twitterings along the line of wrens or
thornbills and a Grey Shrike-thrush. He/she went over and over the full
repertoire for about 5 minutes as we sat and had lunch. The human and dog
sounds were so accurate that it took us some time to convince ourselves that
they were actually coming from the bird, not from some distant dog owner and
their pet.
So if you are traveling through Dunkeld in western Victoria, stop for a pie
and eat it in the Lion’s Park with the Magpie. He/she may not sing for us
again though because we drove off without paying for the concert with an
offering of food, especially not any of the flaky pastry from atop my pie
(smile).
Cheers
Jenny
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