The past 2-3 years I’d noticed that there seemed to be fewer of the Currawongs about (called White-backed Magpies here in Hawkes Bay, probably because they too are black and white.) Normally my shelterbelts are filled with their medodic warbling but the last couple of years I haven’t heard so much of that. Not this last summer, they’ve been back, babies ‘yeeping’ from the trees, parents zooming around and studying me amiably from fenceposts. I believe that elsewhere they do make attacks on people getting too close to their nest sites, but that’s never applied here and when the babies fly I’ve often walked within 5-6 feet of a family line-up on a fence rail. I hope that they had a good breeding season and that there’s still more of them around next summer. They may be Australians originally, but after so many generations I think they do belong here now. I like them and I love their endearing bubbling song. I think my area is lucky to have them and may they live long and prosper here.
It Was a Magpie Summer.
30 April 2014
The past 2-3 years I’d noticed that there seemed to be fewer of the Currawongs about (called White-backed Magpies here in Hawkes Bay, probably because they too are black and white.) Normally my shelterbelts are filled with their medodic warbling but the last couple of years I haven’t heard so much of that. Not this last summer, they’ve been back, babies ‘yeeping’ from the trees, parents zooming around and studying me amiably from fenceposts. I believe that elsewhere they do make attacks on people getting too close to their nest sites, but that’s never applied here and when the babies fly I’ve often walked within 5-6 feet of a family line-up on a fence rail. I hope that they had a good breeding season and that there’s still more of them around next summer. They may be Australians originally, but after so many generations I think they do belong here now. I like them and I love their endearing bubbling song. I think my area is lucky to have them and may they live long and prosper here.