Magpie Rescue

In the true spirirt of "man bites dog", this morning a cyclist rescued
a magpie.

There is a local pair of magpies around my house, and from time to
time I feed them a small treat (as a result of which, they don't swoop
me). They also follow me around when I'm tilling my veggie garden,
looking for worms and grubs.

Anyway, their offspring has grown big enough to fly, but he still has
downy grey feathers on his body. There's a gum tree at my backyard
gate, which is very oozy and sticky with sap this time of year:

http://www.otherpower.com/images/sci...tuckMagpie.jpg

I noticed flapping and squawking noises coming from the tree as I was
about to ride to work this morning, and investigation revealed the
poor little guy stuck upside-down in the tree, with one leg adhered to
the sticky gum leaves all the way up to drumstick level. (This of
course had to be a branch about 6m from the ground).

In my boyhood days I used to really like climbing trees. These days I
get about 3-4m off the ground and start to think "I'll get quite
seriously injured when I hit the ground from up here". Since the
branch he was stuck to was at least 2m from the main trunk and
unlikely to support my weight, I carried a rope and pruning saw up
with me, tied off the limb and sawed it though. Once it was free I
lowered the branch (with magpie still firmly attached) to Mrs Humble,
who freed him from his sticky prison.

Amusingly, once she started to free him he started making a hell of a
racket, which summoned his parents who proceeded to take it in turns
to swoop Mrs Humble from either side.

Even more amusingly, once we'd freed him he flew off across the street
and swooped a small child about 50m away who was innocently waiting
for the school bus. I can just imagine his little magpie brain
thinking "Someone must pay for my humiliation!" ;-)


BTH

Well done, nice story and nice work.

BT Humble wrote:
In the true spirirt of "man bites dog", this morning a cyclist rescued
a magpie.

There is a local pair of magpies around my house, and from time to
time I feed them a small treat (as a result of which, they don't swoop
me). They also follow me around when I'm tilling my veggie garden,
looking for worms and grubs.

Anyway, their offspring has grown big enough to fly, but he still has
downy grey feathers on his body. There's a gum tree at my backyard
gate, which is very oozy and sticky with sap this time of year:

http://www.otherpower.com/images/sci...tuckMagpie.jpg

I noticed flapping and squawking noises coming from the tree as I was
about to ride to work this morning, and investigation revealed the
poor little guy stuck upside-down in the tree, with one leg adhered to
the sticky gum leaves all the way up to drumstick level. (This of
course had to be a branch about 6m from the ground).

In my boyhood days I used to really like climbing trees. These days I
get about 3-4m off the ground and start to think "I'll get quite
seriously injured when I hit the ground from up here". Since the
branch he was stuck to was at least 2m from the main trunk and
unlikely to support my weight, I carried a rope and pruning saw up
with me, tied off the limb and sawed it though. Once it was free I
lowered the branch (with magpie still firmly attached) to Mrs Humble,
who freed him from his sticky prison.

Amusingly, once she started to free him he started making a hell of a
racket, which summoned his parents who proceeded to take it in turns
to swoop Mrs Humble from either side.

Even more amusingly, once we'd freed him he flew off across the street
and swooped a small child about 50m away who was innocently waiting
for the school bus. I can just imagine his little magpie brain
thinking "Someone must pay for my humiliation!" ;-)


BTH



--
Remove norubbish to reply

Hi

pitty you never took a pikky of the stuck maggie.

congratulations nice work. I once rescuced a plover chick from a storm water
drain all the while getting swooped by the mother plover.

thank goodness for helments.



In article
, BT Humble
wrote:
In the true spirirt of "man bites dog", this morning a cyclist rescued
a magpie.

There is a local pair of magpies around my house, and from time to
time I feed them a small treat (as a result of which, they don't swoop
me). They also follow me around when I'm tilling my veggie garden,
looking for worms and grubs.

Anyway, their offspring has grown big enough to fly, but he still has
downy grey feathers on his body. There's a gum tree at my backyard
gate, which is very oozy and sticky with sap this time of year:

http://www.otherpower.com/images/sci...tuckMagpie.jpg

I noticed flapping and squawking noises coming from the tree as I was
about to ride to work this morning, and investigation revealed the
poor little guy stuck upside-down in the tree, with one leg adhered to
the sticky gum leaves all the way up to drumstick level. (This of
course had to be a branch about 6m from the ground).

In my boyhood days I used to really like climbing trees. These days I
get about 3-4m off the ground and start to think "I'll get quite
seriously injured when I hit the ground from up here". Since the
branch he was stuck to was at least 2m from the main trunk and
unlikely to support my weight, I carried a rope and pruning saw up
with me, tied off the limb and sawed it though. Once it was free I
lowered the branch (with magpie still firmly attached) to Mrs Humble,
who freed him from his sticky prison.

Amusingly, once she started to free him he started making a hell of a
racket, which summoned his parents who proceeded to take it in turns
to swoop Mrs Humble from either side.

Even more amusingly, once we'd freed him he flew off across the street
and swooped a small child about 50m away who was innocently waiting
for the school bus. I can just imagine his little magpie brain
thinking "Someone must pay for my humiliation!" ;-)


BTH


See Ya
(when bandwidth gets better ;-)

Chris Eastwood
Photographer, Programmer Motorcyclist and dingbat
blog: http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/

please remove undies for reply

obakesan wrote:

Hi

pitty you never took a pikky of the stuck maggie.

congratulations nice work. I once rescuced a plover chick from a storm water
drain all the while getting swooped by the mother plover.

thank goodness for helments.

Since we're on the animal rescue theme. I was having a bad day with the
puncture gods while riding near Baraba in NSW so I was walking over a
cattle grid to avoid any chance of another one. Under the grid was a
wallaby. It kept hopping from one side of the grid to the other and
jumping up to extracate itself. The problem was with each leap it would
hit its head against the bars. After much effort I managed to corner it
and drag it out of the grid.

It stood still for a few seconds then decided to hop away. I suppose it
was a bit groggy because it did a complete U-turn and hopped back toward
me and fell straight down the grid again. Next time I took it a bit
further away before letting it have a lie down.


P