bird detectives
Nature can be a cruel business and if there's one proper bugger in the bird world, it's the magpie.
The humble pigeon has the reputation of being a rat with wings, but it's pica pica that's the nastiest thing with feathers.
I say this after witnessing an appalling display of bird-on-bird violence on my lawn this morning.
Two magpies attacked and killed a poor little thrush while its mate stood by and did the bird equivalent of hysteria.
I'd never seen anything quite like it before.
It was pure mindless violence, the sort we see on the news everyday but rather than thugs versus goths or drunks versus doting dads, this was unprovoked, frenzied and deadly.
If magpies wore clothes, these would have worn hoodies.
Naturally, I called the RSPB, Homicide Division, and reported the crime.
They asked me to go in and file a statement, which I duly did.
"Would you recognise them again?" the DCI asked me.
I told him I would and I gave him a detailed description of the culprits.
The killers are 40-51 cm in length. Their head, neck and breast are glossy black with a metallic green and violet sheen; the belly and scapulars are pure white; the wings are black glossed with green or purple, and the one has white inner webs, conspicuous when the wing is open. Their tails are black, shot with bronze-green and other iridescent colours. The legs and bill are black.
He's sending a trained female officer out to interview the distraught thrush which witnessed the whole thing.
I told the officer that I live in a quiet area where people are nice and don't want no trouble.
The whole incident had left the community in shock, and many elderly people are now afraid to go out for fear of being pecked by these crow-like cowards.
The police are confident of making an arrest soon. They have had unprecedented support from the whole of the bird kingdom. A bird liaison officer has addressed a public meeting in which the thrushes were threatening to form a vigilante group to run the magpies out of town.
There's a certain fragile peace for now, but God knows what will happen if it kicks off again.
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Sir,
The urban jungle can be an unforgiving place.
Only the strong and the wrong survive.
As we are surrounded by cats, death comes often and messily to our lawnage.
The birds have got wise, although it doesn't stop them from squabbling amongst themselves whilst the cats are not looking.
Whenever I venture out of our front or back door I'm confronted by a slightly unnerving mob of blackbirds.
They're incredibly inquisitive.
They put me in mind of an actual factual coach party of tourists being shunted from one "site" to the next and grabbing as much sensory information in 5 seconds as they can get - if they had little blackbird-sized digital cameras I'm sure they'd reel off a few hundred shots as I step out the door.
I wouldn't mind, but I'm really not that interesting.
it can only be a matter of time now before the birds turn against the cats... i believe the magpie can probably hold its own in a fight with a badger...
Sir,
Indeed.
Revenge of the birds will be both fanatical and feathery.
But I fear the cats will then turn on other animal folk.
I have evidence that our local cat population has been worrying small, scurrying, four-legged things hereabouts in this neck of the woods. These animal folk have been forced out of their homes and everything.
Believe myself when I say there is nothing quite so mournful as hearing a vole sighing.
Vole lotta shakin' goin' on
There's a worrying trend down my way where birds have been given postal votes and are now believed to be planning some sort of democratic coup (or is it coo?) on a scale only witnessed in zimbabwe. as i type, small four-legged critters are being driven from their homes in handsworth park and being made to collect shopping trollies from the car park at One Stop. i think we should arm the badgers, voles and rabbits. Clearly this is just the tip of the iceberg....
Ouch!
Where I live birds have begun taking pot shots with air rifles at passing peeps. They encourage their cats to hunt then play with us.
Of course they're never happy to find a wounded human flapping on their kitchen floor.
And we can always resort to holding them down and then....
Sirs (Cowen, Langley, Booth),
I am a firm believer that animal folk are slowly and subtly taking over the world.
It is going to be a bit like that docu-drama The Planet of the Apes, only not with chimps and stuff but with little furry, scuttling things.
The voles are sighing, but they're also muttering with a discontent I haven't heard since Jim Callaghan was in power.
If the birds do arm themselves it will get beastly in a big way and we human forms will get caught in the crossfire.
I blame cats...the domestic feline variety, obviously, not the populist musical.
living as i do right in the middle of a village of them, the true asbo hoodies of the bird world are the canada geese; shrieking & stomping about, and (especially during nesting season) viciously attacking anybody who has the temerity to want to walk past them.
the planet of the apes analogy is not wrong; for years all fowl have been used to humans giving them bread, & can see the humans & often rush to meet them to pester for food. but of late i've noticed where i live the humans in the third & fourth floor & higher flats chucking bits of bread into the canal for the geese to eat - since the geese won't be able to see the source, are they thinking it's raining food ? is there any risk of this activity causing the geese to evolve some kind of religious belief - da ceiling-goose feedz us ? could that lead to other developments in goosekind which could ultimately lead to a global fowl takeover of the planet ?
yeah geese... they have evil in their bones... the nasty eyes and big flappy wings... one chased me along a canal towpath for half a mile once for no reason whatsoever. Pigeons may yet save us... i have trained many to eat the sick on broad street on a sunday morning, keeping our city clean for tourists... but what about dogs? whose side are they on? the gits...