No Casino shootout: police deny plan to kill swooping magpies in NSW town

Police say media reports that trained marksmen would be brought in to control the town’s magpies were incorrect

Naaman Zhou

Fri 4 Oct 2019 07.44 BSTLast modified on Fri 4 Oct 2019 07.58 BST

Police in the northern New South Wales town of Casino have denied they planned to deploy specially trained officers to shoot and kill magpies, contrary to media reports.

On Friday the Northern Star reported that elite police officers would descend on the town to shoot local magpies which have been deemed too dangerous to live.

According to quotes attributed to acting sergeant David Henderson, police “specially trained to euthanise animals as painlessly and quickly as possible” were to be brought in.

But NSW Police issued a statement in the afternoon saying “there is no proposed magpie cull in Casino or anywhere in the Richmond police district”.

Local councillor Jill Lyons confirmed there were no plans, and said she was glad it had not come to such measures.

“No one is aware of extra police coming into the area,” she said. “No police have been called in to shoot anything in the Richmond valley this season.

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Large-group living boosts magpie intelligence

February 7, 2018, University of Exeter

Growing up in a large social group makes Australian magpies more intelligent, new research shows.

Using four tasks to test intelligence, scientists from the University of Exeter and the University of Western Australia found wild Australian magpies from larger groups showed "elevated cognitive performance".

The study also found more intelligent females produced more offspring.

The research suggests that the demands of living in complex social groups may play a role in the evolution of intelligence.

"Australian magpies - from Western Australia, where we conducted our research - live in stable social groups," said Dr Alex Thornton, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

"We showed that individuals living in larger groups in the wild show elevated cognitive performance, which in turn is linked to increased reproductive success.

"Repeated testing of juveniles at different ages showed that the link between group size and intelligence emerged in early life."

Researchers examined 14 wild groups of Australian magpies (Western Australian subspecies Cracticus tibicen dorsalis) in Perth, ranging in size from three to 12 birds.

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Surge in eye injuries as Melbourne magpies go on attack spree

Hospital issues warning as ‘extraordinary’ spate of bird-inflicted injuries include a penetrated eye that required surgery

Australian Associated Press

Thursday 19 October 2017 03.54 BSTLast modified on Thursday 19 October 2017 04.04 BST

A penetrated eye that needed surgery is just one of an “extraordinary” spate of magpie-inflicted injuries in Melbourne, and one hospital has issued a warning about the swooping birds.

The number of eye injuries caused by the bird has risen significantly, according to the emergency director of the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear hospital, Dr Carmel Crock.

 “Normally, we might see one or two a month,” she told ABC radio on Thursday. “But in July we saw 14 cases of bird eye injuries. August there were 12.

“In the last week, we saw five in the one day, including a penetrating eye injury that needed to go to theatre.”

Many attacks took place in Lonsdale Street, Punt Road, Lygon Street and Heffernan Lane in the CBD, Crock said.

The “extraordinary” number of incidents led several staff registrars to ask hospital executives to take action, she said. “We really just did want to warn the public.

“Although a lot of the injuries are quite minor … they can really go all the way through and cause a penetrating injury, with bleeding and bruising at the back of the eye.”

Australia’s swooping season starts in spring as predominantly male magpies dive down on cyclists, pedestrians and runners who go near nests.

There have been 3,253 recorded attacks and 518 injuries linked to magpies across the country in 2017, according to the Magpie Alert website.

Read on  

'Worst magpie season ever': Woman finds bird 'nesting' in her BED - and her photo prompts calls for a cull

The photo of the native Australian bird triggered calls for a magpie cull 

Magpie season ahead is predicted to be the most aggressive in years 

Top tips for how to avoid being swooped by a magpie this spring season 

By KATE DARVALL FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

PUBLISHED: 07:40, 5 September 2016 | UPDATED: 09:56, 5 September 2016

Is Australia on the verge of the 'worst magpie season yet'?

It is according to one person who walked into their bedroom to find the Australian bird making itself at home on their bed.

Soon after the Reddit user 'duckla' posted the photo to the social media website, the post was bombarded with comments. 

Terrified woman puts magpie deterrents to the test in Mildura

While a few people commented on how 'sweet' or 'beautiful' magpies were, the post was also on the receiving end of some colourful criticism of the flighted animal. 

One Reddit user made it clear he was not a fan, writing 'duck, dive, run'.   

'I know come swooping season, there will be one very grumpy, sleep deprived bird coming for me,' another user said. 

Read more:

In a race for Cheetos, magpies win, but crows steal

August 11, 2016

Black-billed magpies and American crows, both members of the clever corvid family of birds, have adapted comfortably to life in urban and suburban communities. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the two species often nest nearby each other in backyards and parks. Nesting near their much larger crow cousins affords magpies a margin of extra safety from a common enemy—ravens, an even larger corvid species.

"Ravens are notorious nest raiders," said Rhea Esposito, an educational program leader at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. During her graduate work at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Esposito studied how birds associate during nesting season. Smaller birds sometimes nest near larger species to benefit from their more aggressive defense against predators. Research has tended to focus on the protection side of the relationship. But what about competition? Do magpies pay a food penalty for nesting near larger rivals? Or do the smaller birds compensate with bold pursuit of new food sources?

To find out which of the two corvids were more intrepid snack scouts, Esposito presented breeding pairs with a set of Cheetos challenges. She will present her results today at the 101st Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, during a session on animal Behavior.

"Cheetos are not the healthiest food, but the birds like them a lot," said Esposito. "And because they are bright orange, it was really easy to observe when the birds completed the task."

Esposito set out Cheetos near nests and settled in to watch the birds fly down to investigate. Magpies moved on the unfamiliar food an average of 20 seconds faster that crows, which eyed the orange treats with more suspicion, pausing longer before picking them up. Once having identified Cheetos as food, however, crows were more apt to steal.

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Magpies, kookaburras and willie wagtails among common Australian birds 'starting to disappear', report suggests

By Loretta Florance

Updated earlier today at 4:57am

Sightings of magpies, laughing kookaburras and willie wagtails are on the decline in some regions, a report tracking the health of Australia's bird populations has found.

The State of Australia's Birds Report, published by Birdlife Australia, analysed data collected in more than 400,000 surveys across the country, the majority done by bird-loving volunteers.

.(Audience submitted: Tess Kleine)

Editor of Australian Birdlife Sean Dooley said the decline of common birds in parts of Australia was a surprise to researchers.

He said while predators including cats, habitat loss and even changes in climate might be to blame, more research was needed before certain species became endangered.

"The stuff that Birdlife Australia has come out with is showing is that a lot of birds that we assumed were really common and sailing along quite fine are showing significant declines," he told 774 ABC Melbourne.

"While they're still not endangered, it's basically the first step to them becoming endangered, so we really need to use this as a wake-up call and start looking at what we're doing across landscapes to try and figure out what's going on."

Of Australia's 137 terrestrial bird species, only 10 per cent showed a "consistent overall trend" the report found, with most birds, including magpies and willie wagtails, appeared to be declining in some regions, while increasing in others.

The truth about magpies

Supposedly they steal shiny objects to line their nests, but that story comes from a 19th-century French play

Presented by

Henry Nicholls

Reputation: Magpies are well known for their thievery, avidly collecting shiny objects to adorn their nests. They will also feed on the eggs and chicks of defenceless songbirds, a nasty habit that has caused a decline in many familiar species.

Reality: Magpies are not thieves, merely inquisitive. They are interested in objects but show no preference for shininess. It's true that they are voracious predators of songbirds, but there is no evidence that this has resulted in a population crash.

Magpies do not have the best of reputations. There are actually many species of magpie, but most of the rumours centre on Eurasian magpies (Pica pica).

In 1815, two French playwrights penned a "historical melodrama" called La Pie Voleuse, in which a servant is sentenced to death for stealing silverware from her master, when the real thief is his pet magpie. Moved by the Parisian urban myth, Gioachino Rossini set his opera La gazza ladra to the same story. This effectively nailed the magpie's character to the gibbet of popular opinion.

Fast-forward 200 years and researchers subjected magpies toexperiments that finally put the thieving stereotype to the test. They gave wild Eurasian magpies two piles of nuts. One was near shiny objects like screws, rings and rectangles of aluminium foil; the other was near the same objects sprayed matte blue.

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Mom's hormones could make female magpie chicks more adventurous

Date:

September 1, 2014

Source:

University of Lincoln

Summary:

Female magpies have been shown to be more adventurous than their male siblings, according to new research. “The fact that observable differences between the first hatched and last hatched magpie’s behaviors exist indicates that mothers may be able to produce variable traits, possibly through adjustable transmission of maternal hormones or creating the conditions for sibling rivalry. Mothers could potentially produce a variety of personalities perhaps as an adaptive strategy in unpredictable environmental conditions," researchers say.

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New study takes the shine off magpie folklore

Date:

August 15, 2014

Source:

University of Exeter

Summary:

Magpies are not attracted to shiny objects and don't routinely steal small trinkets such as jewelry, according to a new study. In European culture, it is widely accepted that magpies (Pica pica) are the pilferers of the bird kingdom, unconditionally attracted to sparkly things and prone to pinching them for their nests, almost as a compulsion.

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Cuckoos' shameless egg-laying tactics revealed

Great spotted cuckoos lay their eggs while magpie mothers are still sitting on their nests, a study has shown.

Cuckoos are known for deceiving other birds into raising their young by depositing their eggs into host nests.

It had been thought female cuckoos waited until host birds left the nest before secretively laying their eggs.

But researchers were surprised when they recorded female cuckoos forcing magpies out of the way as they sat incubating their eggs.

The scientists, from Spain and Belgium wrote: "Great spotted cuckoo females entered the nest more frequently when the magpie female was incubating than when the nest was empty.

"This implies that great spotted cuckoo female behaviour is not secretive at all."

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Magpie parents know a baby cuckoo when they see one

Cuckoo fledglings are fed less frequently by magpie parents when raised together with magpie nestlings

December 2013: Cuckoo fledglings left in magpie nests are fed much less frequently by their foster parents when raised in mixed broods with the magpie’s own nestlings, according to research led by Manuel Soler of the Universidad de Granada in Spain. The findings are published in Springer’s journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Cuckoos often lay their eggs in the nests of magpies so that their chicks can be raised by the latter.

Very little is known about the relationships between foster parents and fledglings of brood parasites, whose offspring are incubated and raised by members of other species. 

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Magpies Make Decisions Faster When Humans Look at Them

June 7, 2013 — Researchers from the Seoul National University found that wild birds appear to "think faster" when humans, and possibly predators in general, are directly looking at them.

"We started this study from our experience" says Dr. Sang-im Lee, the leader of magpie research team and the first author of the paper. "For a long time we had this impression that somehow magpies know that we are watching them because they often fly away from us when we observe them. But when we don't observe them, we can pass them pretty close-by but they don't fly away!"

The finding that animals notice the gaze of humans is not new. Usually animals use gaze of the conspecifics in social contexts and therefore pet animals pay attention to the gaze of humans -- their social mates. Also in the case of predator and prey interactions it is well known that animals such like birds, lizards or deer move away or escape from humans at larger distances when people look directly at them. In these situations it was believed that animals react at larger distance and sooner because the gaze is an indicator to the prey that the predator "wants to catch it." Therefore, when a prey notices the gaze of a predator it moves away from the predator in order to increase safety. Not surprisingly, the researchers found that magpies on the campus of the Seoul National University also flew away at larger distances when humans were directly looking at them.

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