Just another WordPress.com site

Mating Behaviour in Magpies plus Sightings of Robins

I saw this strange behaviour between these two Magpies on the steps of  a building where the female would shiver her wings and body, then the male who was sitting above her on a railing , would swoop down on her. This  happened twice.The first picture shows the female shivering for the second time, vigorously flapping her wings close to her body.

Image

The second picture shows the male swooping down to the female who is tilting her tail and hind end up in the air.

Image

Then the pair flew to a nearby tree and both disappeared into this nest, entering from the side away from me.

Image

At the end of the street where I live I observed one lone magpie near an obvious magpie nest.I thought maybe if I waited,  it would go into the nest.

Image

 

It went closer but did not attempt to enter the nest.

Image 

Instead, another one came out  of it. The second one appears to be holding a stick  in its mouth. The two of them flew off together.

Image

I also saw three robins today, the first is a female in the woods.

Image

The second was a male down the street from the woods, not necessarily the mate.

Image

 

And the third was a male singing in a tree  beside the magpie nest.

Image

There is a nest in the same tree, but not a typical robin’s nest. Who knows?

Image

 

There is a lot of activity in the neighbourhood,and plenty of opportunities to observe magpies, house finches, robins, crows, house sparrows, all of whom are nesting in the neighbourhood or nearby. Next month the warblers will arrive. I am looking forward to the upcoming season.

 

 

 

2 responses

  1. Lots of robins here. I rarely ever take their photos because they are so common. Are magpies related to crows? They kinda have that cunning look about them.

    April 21, 2014 at 6:35 pm

    • Yes, they are of the Corvidae family-crows, magpies, jays, ravens, nutcrackers, treepies, , jackdaws, choughs, rooks.I am not even familiar with the last four.Robins are a harbinger of spring here, as are, unofficially, gulls and crows.

      April 22, 2014 at 5:38 pm

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s