The Australian magpie has again topped the charts in BirdLife Australia\u2019s Aussie Bird Count as the feathered friend most often spotted across the country.<\/p>\n
But while the Australian magpie is an everyday feature for many of us, there\u2019s nothing boring about them.<\/p>\n
Here are five amazing things you might not know about Australia\u2019s most often seen bird.<\/p>\n
Magpies can recognise human faces … and voices<\/p>\n
\u201cThey form relationships with people. They are nice to people who are nice to them,\u201d says emeritus Prof Gisela Kaplan, of the University of New England, who literally wrote the book on the Australian magpie\u2019s behaviour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will recognise faces and will know which people belong to a property and they\u2019ll know their pets too,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Magpies are thought to use this ability to help them differentiate between a threatening human and a friendly one. They can also recognise humans from their voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n Magpies are amazing mimics<\/p>\n Kaplan has been studying magpies for about 30 years.<\/p>\n While lyrebirds have a reputation of being incredible mimics (they can make the sounds of car alarms and chainsaws<\/a> as well as those of other species), Kaplan has compared their mimicry with magpies.<\/p>\n It is only the lyrebird male that mimics, and only during courtship. Whereas both male and female magpies can mimic other bird species and Kaplan says they do it more precisely and then intersperse those calls with their own.<\/p>\n But it doesn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n Kaplan says magpies can use their mimicry intelligently and she recalls one male magpie that tended to sit on a log in a New South Wales garden shared with a family dog and cat.<\/p>\n The magpie had learned to speak the name of the family dog. Whenever the cat would stalk the magpie, the bird called the dog, which came running, causing the cat to run away.<\/p>\n Magpies are intelligent and loyal<\/p>\n Prof Amanda Ridley is a behavioural ecologist at the University of Western Australia and has been studying the cognitive abilities of the state\u2019s unique sub-species of Australian magpie.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s fair to say they are an intelligent bird,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Ridley and her colleagues have been setting an array of tests for magpies, such as learning which colour or shade of colour was associated with a food reward, or where a reward was likely to be in an array of holes set out in a shape (which would sometimes be turned upside down).<\/p>\n In one study<\/a>, it was found that fledglings living in bigger groups tended to be able to solve puzzles faster than those living in smaller groups \u2013 regardless of the performance of their parent.<\/p>\n This might be because living in bigger groups requires an individual to recognise and remember more individuals \u2013 a skill they could translate to a puzzle.<\/p>\n Kaplan says as well as being \u201ca very bright bird\u201d, magpies are also loyal. Groups of magpies will move long distances looking for a territory but once they find it \u2013 whether in the bush or your local park \u2013 they will stick around for many years.<\/p>\n She says magpies will become so familiar with the people in their territory that they are known to bring their fledglings along to their friendly neighbourhood humans.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll bring them to the back porch and introduce them,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a real honour when they do that. But we say [if that happens] don\u2019t feed the young ones.\u201d<\/p>\n Magpies will help each other out<\/p>\n And speaking of intelligence.<\/p>\n Researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast designed a new harness for a GPS tracker to attach to Australian magpies to find out more about their habits.<\/p>\n One habit they hadn\u2019t accounted for was the ability of one magpie to find the weak point of the harness and then remove it from another magpie.<\/p>\n After successfully attaching the trackers to five magpies, researchers saw one magpie trying to remove her own tracker, before another magpie approached to help, pecking at the device. It was off within 10 minutes.<\/p>\n