The Australian or Eurasian Magpie is considered to be one of the most intelligent animals, let alone birds, in the world. It is one of the few that can recognise it’s reflection as an image of itself and not another magpie.
This one was just in the mood for a bath on a hot summer’s day, but he needed to check out the bath from his perch beforehand.
As usual you may click and enlarge the photos should you choose to. 🙂
You get an idea of the relative size of the birds if you compare this pic to my video of the New Holland Honeyeaters! 🙂
love.
BLob's Blog 
Beautiful photos! How is the weather these days?
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Thank you!
Our weather is, in a word, weird!
We had 37 deg C (99F) today and we’re expecting 39 tomorrow and 36 on Sunday!
Up in my state’s north they hit 47C today (116F) while in the Eastern half of the country they have had five successive days of severe storms culminating today in a thunder hailstorm with hailstones the size of lemons that caused massive damage.
I literally cannot remember the last time Perth had any rain – i think it must have been sometime in September. 😦
It may not rain here again before March!
Somehow i’m keeping a few plants alive – my blue rose is beginning to flower and i hope it survives this weekend!
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What a big magpie! They look well fed. The contrast of colors interest me. I wonder if it’s different for each gender of the species. I’ve always wondered if birds were a type of spiritual messengers. I also recently watched a documentary on birds where I’ve learned how intelligent they can be.
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He does look pretty hefty for sure. Because of their intelligence and beautiful warbling calls a number of people here feed them on a regular basis. They remember human faces and know who they can ‘trust’.
Not so sure about how spiritual they are?? but there does seem to be a fair bit of lore around avian messengers (of foreboding doom mostly!) 🙂
Our Magpies and the unrelated, slightly smaller Magpie Larks are a little unusual in the bird world in that both the male and the female are similarly strikingly coloured ( if you call black or white a ‘colour’)! There are just slight differences in the white patch shapes to tell one bird from another.
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Remembering human faces was what the documentary mentioned as well! Crows have a similar ability to detect a dangerous face after observation.
Foreboding doom reminds me of Edgar Allen Poe. Anyway, I guess I have friends who’ve had interesting encounters with birds… 🙂
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Quoth The Raven: “Nevermore…”
( I loved the Halloween edition of The Simpson’s where they do Poe’s ‘The Raven’ and it’s got Bart’s head and laugh!)
Interesting encounters hmmm…??
Are you going to leave me hanging? Or might you do a post?? 😉
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The Simpsons’ parody version is funny. 🙂
Well! I’ve been writing a general list of things I want to blog about next year! Blogging Resolutions 2019. I might write a post about what I’m planning and get some feedback! 2018 was more of an experimental stage to try out a bunch of things! We’ll see! 😉
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Just be ‘you’ and i’m sure it will be brilliant! 🙂
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Those magpies are so pretty. They are one of my favorite birds – so sassy! I read a book not too long ago about the intelligence of corvids. We don’t have any near where I live, but 2 of my sons live in the western part of the US, so I get my magpie fix when I visit them.
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They are very handsome birds – both the male and the females. We get quite a few in my city.
They do have a beautiful song but are best known here for swooping on passers by during nesting season. There have been injuries and more than one person has come off their pushbike after a swoop!
Didn’t you post about that (smart Corvids) a short while back? Or was it Marilyn from Serendipity, or Fandango? I watched a you-tube vid where a crow solved a 9 step puzzle?
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It was me. I read a book about bird intelligence that I loved.
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