Father magpie being followed by one of his babies:
What you can't hear is the insistent "eep eep eep" sound the baby makes, demanding food. You would think a baby that size might be able to find food itself, but one of the things the babies have to learn is how to get food from the front of their beak to the back of their throat so they can swallow it. They do pick up bits and pieces (not all of it food) but they they don't know what to do with it. The adults feed them by putting the food right at the back of their throat like this:
The two adult females and one baby:
The adults are the ones with the white beaks. One of them is the mother, the other is the helper, who is probably a daughter from last year (so an elder sister to the babies). A few commenters expressed surprise about the helper adult in my last magpie post, but having extra help is not unusual. According to
Wikipedia about 3 to 8 percent of birds have helpers, but it is much more common in Australian birds.
Our kookaburras have also fledged, but kookaburra territory is much larger than magpie territory so we don't see them often. We don't know how many babies they raised. I have seen 4 kookaburras together, but I don't know if that is the whole family. Kookaburras are another species that have helpers, so there may have been other members of the group nearby that I didn't see.
5 comments:
Kookaburras are my favourite, we had them in the backyard when I was growing up and we would feed them. They were always sitting in the old banksia tree. Don't see many maggies around my place.
Magpies have a beautiful song, but the child's constant demand for food is rather annoying. Interesting information about their slow learning. I guess it makes sure they are big and strong before fully independent. Lots of families around here too but the nest they had been using in the Manna Gum blew down last year.
That’s interesting about the magpies. It is odd to see such a large baby.
Hi Vireya what an interesting post I don't know these about the magpies and kookaburras yet we have them here all the time,Thankyou for sharing this with us my friend xx
Great magpie photos Vireya! And don’t worry, as soon as I see a young Maggie family I can hear that insistent “ eep eep eep” playing in my head, as well as the eguhguh guhhh as they swallow down the food whilst still “eep eeping”!!!
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