The magpies ranging around our backyard are so cute.
The mummy magpie is fossicking, and the babies look like they are playing. The babies are still a little fluffy but are almost as big as their mother. They jump up and stand on the low side rail of the basketball hoop pole together, and team up together to pick at a strand of rope. The rope wins.
They hop up and down from our deckchairs. One finds a pair of Hawaiian shorts drying on a small wire line and pecks at them. I wonder if it believes the flowers are real: it leaves all the other clothes alone. Off the babies go again, picking up odd things: lines of dried grass and a blossom petal from the apple tree. Every now and then they return to their mother squawking, and she finds them a tasty grub.
My attention turns to the mother: she’s using her pointed beak to dig up bugs from our lawn. We’re feeding her and her family, and in return she’s doing some gardening for us.
We’ve been organic here on our suburban block for decades. There are human “gardeners” we’ve turned away over the years because we refused for them to use weedicide or pesticide on our property, and they’ve refused to “garden” without them. But the mother magpie does not argue with us, she simply de-bugs our lawn for free, and provides many minutes of entertainment with her children.
She leaves the babies to their play and flies off over our solar panels. I don’t know where she’s gone, but I know she’ll be back soon. I feel a sudden contentment thinking she is happy to leave them to play awhile in the safety of our backyard.
And that, on our suburban property at least, the world of birds, bees, bugs and humans is in balance.
Joni Page 