BONUS: How to make friends with a magpie this swooping season

Sacha Barbour Gatt (0:09)

Hey, Sacha Barbour Gatt with you, happy Sunday, welcome to this latest episode of The Briefing. And today we're bringing back a chat that I'm very passionate about. I did it back in 2024, and it's all about magpies and why you should not be afraid of them as we head into the warmer months and swooping season. I hope you enjoy.

Springtime in Australia is pretty bloody wonderful. The cold weather is starting to ease and there's warmth in the air again. Flowers start to bloom and the days get longer. The promise of summer and Christmas holidays is right around the corner. But there is one other major event that happens in spring, and it can strike fear into the heart of nearly every Australian. I'm talking, of course, about magpie swooping season.

From August to October, the iconic birds are nesting, and that means they're especially protective of their patch, sparking swooping attacks on innocent humans who just happen to walk by. It's caused people to be genuinely fearful of them, and fair enough, being swooped is not a lot of fun. But as a self-confessed magpie lady who came to befriend a flock of the birds during lockdown in Melbourne, I want to change your mind about them. Joining me today is the birdman himself, Sean Dooley. He's an avid birdwatcher and conservationist from Birdlife Australia, and he's here to tell us why we should learn to love our local maggies. Sean, welcome to The Briefing. Look, first off, explain to us why magpies swoop.

Sean Dooley (1:47)

Yeah, there's this misconception out there that because they swoop in spring, that they're sort of the males are testosterone-filled and it's hormone-driven and makes them go crazy.

But the reasons magpies swoop is because they're just being good parents. It's only the male magpies that swoop, very rare for the female bird to swoop, and the males only will swoop when there's young in the nest essentially. So they're just identifying targets that they think are a threat to those chicks, and they want them out of their territory. So that's the prime reason. They're just being good parents.

Sacha Barbour Gatt (2:26)

Do we know how many Aussies are actually swooped every year and how many result in physical injury?

Sean Dooley (2:33)

We don't know for sure, probably the best proxy measure that we can go off of the magpie websites that alert people to where magpies are swooping, which in themselves can be a really good public service, but also kind of fuel that idea that there's gangs of magpies out there and fuel a bit of hysteria. But even just looking at the most used of those websites, usually there's about 3,000 to 4,000 swooping birds recorded every year, which when you consider that magpies are across almost the entire country, except for the very tropical areas like Darwin and Cape York Peninsula, and they're a very common bird, that 3,000 to 4,000 represents a very, very small percentage of the numbers of magpies out there. So it's definitely a case of not all magpies.

But even on those websites where they do report swooping, you can tell that sometimes it's not a magpie that's doing the swooping. And at times, I'm even not sure whether people have been swooped, have had a magpie fly close to them. So those numbers are probably even lower. It's just that there's so many magpies that even a fraction of the percentage swooping will result in hundreds, probably thousands every year that will actually swoop.

Sacha Barbour Gatt (3:51)

Look, I'm a massive magpie fan, and one of the most impressive things that I've learnt about them is that they have incredible memories and they can remember faces and people because they end up living in the same suburb sometimes for 20, 30 years. So I guess my question then is, if I make friends with my local magpies in January, will that avoid me being swooped come September?

Sean Dooley (4:14)

Definitely. The magpie only swoops because it perceives you as a threat. And in the majority of cases, only 10% of male magpies will swoop anyway. And even those birds, they don't swoop indiscriminately usually.

They'll pick out particular people or they will pick out a particular type of person. So often people on bikes get swooped more often. And that's because of the speed that you're moving through that breeding territory. The magpie doesn't have time to assess what level of threat you are. So it will just be more likely to attack anyway.

And you will get magpies for research shows. They can recognise up to at least 30 faces, probably many more.

And if you're in their neighbourhood all year and you don't want to be swooped by magpies in springtime, the best thing you can do is make friends with a magpie. And that doesn't have to mean you feed them. It can just be free out there, acknowledge them and sort of act in a way that's non-threatening throughout the year. It's a year-long project. Magpies get used to you and they know that you're not a threat. And it's not like they suddenly switch a Jekyll and Hyde personality and they hate you all of a sudden. I mean, some people are often confused because they think they have a good relationship with their local magpie and then they get swooped. But what they may have done inadvertently is taken some action like even just standing near the nesting tree and looking up at it without even realising that the magpie doesn't know that and it's actually thinking, you're trying to work out how to get to my chicks. And it can remember that for many years afterwards. So really, magpie swooping happens in spring, but it's a year round problem we need to address.