WingedHearts.org More love than you thought possible

My telescope is in our breakfast room pointed at Vicky's nest, and when I looked this morning, no baby to be seen! This called for a trip across the fields to visit the nest.  read more »

Just a quick note to tell you about a remarkable thing that happened this morning.  read more »

Both our magpie families have babies now. Billy, our neighbour's magpie, who can't resist stopping by for a feed whenever he sees me, and his mate Polly have two new bubs out of the nest but still staying in the trees and waiting for food to be brought to them. Meanwhile, their bubs from last year, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, are acting more baby-like to keep on getting attention, even though many one-year-old magpies have already left home by this stage.  read more »

Thusday afternoon before sunset, our wandering ex-patient, Butch, suddenly flew into the frangipani and landed beside me. You will recall Butch went blind and we had to keep her in a cage for over a week while we treated her eyes each day. Then she and Cass spent a day singing all around their territory, and both vanished. The birds have a much more complex life than we humans often give them credit for. Taking holidays, visiting friends and relatives, kids' sleepovers - they do it all. What exactly Butch has been up to we may never know.  read more »

Can 'mere birds' hold conferences? It seems so. On Saturday, I drove down to the local shop and, on the way back, was startled to see twenty magpies (I counted them) approaching Maggie's territory from the southwest. The whole lot alighted on Maggie's 'main tree', which I could just see by looking upwards through the windscreen. (Yes, I did first stop the car!)  read more »

Our beautiful Sophie Magpie has passed away.

Yesterday afternoon, despite having shaken off the flu, Sophie still had her eye trouble, and after so long not feeding herself and only eating bread and cheese, was looking shaky on her legs. Also yesterday was, after a warm dry spell, both continuously raining and very cold. She also refused to come down from the bank (about four feet high) to our back yard for food, and we had to throw it up onto the bank for her.  read more »

Sophie Magpie is still sick, unfortunately. If you recall, she had the same eye trouble as Butch Butcherbird, but also had some sort of flu, shaking fluid from her face at intervals.  read more »

Saturday morning I was at the front gate chatting to Vicky Magpie when the noisy miners let out an almighty screech. Looking up, I saw a huge wedgetailed eagle wheeling overhead. Vicky went very still, and watched the eagle intently. But then the eagle started to glide away out over the valley, away from our magpies' territory. Then I saw why!  read more »

Our butcherbird group (Butch and Cas are still AWOL) now consists of Dimpy, 3y.o., and Kerry (2y.o.) and two new birds. One seems to be from the intruder group who has changed groups, and we are calling him Terry, and one other who knows us so well we think it must be someone we knew years ago. Dimpy's older brothers, Teddy and Tommy, and his still-older brothers, Eddy and Freddy, are out there somewhere, and maybe this is one of them. The trouble is it's extremely hard to tell butcherbirds apart. Magpies are hard enough, but butcherbirds look almost identical to human eyes.  read more »