Count me!

It's been Aussie Backyard Bird Count Week again, and yours truly has been doing his bit. In my case it involves sitting on my roof (I love my roof), for 20 minutes at a time, noting down all the birds that turn up in my field of view.

It goes like this. Noisy Miner, Noisy Miner, ...........Kookaburra, Noisy Miner, Sulphur Crested Cockatoo, ..........a wattle bird or two, .........and what were those little things flitting overhead so quick?  And then another Noisy Miner.

The results go online immediately, and 2017 statistics can be viewed here:  https://aussiebirdcount.org.au/statistics/

The full 2016 results are here: https://aussiebirdcount.org.au/2016-results/
Australia-wide, the rankings were: 1. Rainbow Lorikeet, 2. Noisy Miner, 3. Australian Magpie. Within New South Wales, it was: 1. Rainbow Lorikeet, 2. Noisy Miner, 3. Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo.

I was rigorous with my timings, and of course found that the most interesting birds appeared just after the 20 minutes was up. Look at this beautiful and amazingly cheeky King Parrot, who turned up yesterday to check out our back patio (and me), during a non-counting period.

Attack of the killer magpies!

Every year about this time the lovely, friendly Australian magpie - the ones with the heavenly lilting song, the very essence of Australian suburbia - undergo a terrifying transformation. They all get together for a motivational session where they watch Alfred Hitchcock's training video. Then they get out there and wage war on us.

A couple of years ago one of my cycling companions was knocked unconscious by one of them. She initially had no idea what caused her to be on the ground beside her bike with an ambulance crew in attendance, but later remembered the dreaded black-and-white feathery presence that had nearly caused her demise.

This year it's the turn of another of my fellow bikers. Bob reported being swooped by about eight separate birds within a couple of hours the other day, with one of them taking a piece out of his ear. So I joined him on a mission to track down the offenders, get the photographic evidence, and expose their heinous crimes publicly. We retraced his route along the Western Sydney bike paths, with me following him at a safe distance, my camera ready.

This time we encountered four of the warrior birds, defending their separate territories. All of them swooped him without warning, one giving him a thump as it passed. In two cases the bird went back for several more goes, resting momentarily on branches or power lines between attacks. Needless to say I was never quite ready enough with the camera for the impact shots, but you can get the idea from this series of pics.

We noticed that the attacks all came on his first run past the bird. When he came back for the staged re-enactment photo shoot, the bird would hold off, just watching moodily from a distance. I think that by turning round and coming back, Bob had won the battle and shown he was top bird. And the thing had noticed Bob had a friend with a gun (camera actually).

It's said that magpies identify particular humans, dividing them into friends and enemies on some unknown basis. They have very long memories too, and once you're down as an enemy, you're marked for life.