<\/p>\n
Do you have a vicious magpie near your house or your school yard?<\/p>\n
You may well get nervous when you see a magpie at this time of year, but there\u2019s no reason to fret just yet.<\/p>\n
According to this study<\/a>, less than 10% of all magpie breeding pairs show any aggression to people \u2013 and of these pairs, it\u2019s usually only the males who swoop. So there\u2019s less than 5% chance that the magpie you see will swoop you!\u00a0 The odds are in your favour.<\/p>\n If you do happen to encounter one of those 5% who swoop, your best bet is to avoid the area.\u00a0 Magpies are intensely territorial, and they won\u2019t trespass into areas that don\u2019t \u2018belong\u2019 to them.\u00a0 You might also want to walk your bike through that area \u2013 the speed of moving bicycles can aggravate them.<\/p>\n Sunglasses are a great way to protect the most vulnerable part of your face.\u00a0 If you\u2019re cycling and it\u2019s getting dark, you might also want to invest in a pair of goggles.\u00a0 If you\u2019re thinking about studying science at uni soon, you definitely won\u2019t regret buying a pair of safety goggles a little early!\u00a0 You can get them from university co-op stores or online.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a useful online tool<\/a> where you can check for magpie attacks, as well as log any that have happened to you. You could also get some tips from CSIRO\u2019s very<\/a> scientific<\/a> tests investigating what annoys the magpie living outside their laboratories.<\/p>\n You could also take a deeper interest and observe the magpies in your area \u2013 take a look at whether it has a mate, where it nests, and even take the time to enjoy its song.\u00a0 Magpies can stay tied to their territory for life \u2013 sometimes up to 20 years!\u00a0 So you\u2019re probably meeting the same magpie day in, day out (indeed, year in, year out!).\u00a0 See how many different magpies you can spot in your neighbourhood!<\/p>\n If you enjoy learning about and observing animals, you should take a look at our Animal Behaviour<\/a> courses<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you have a vicious magpie near your house or your school yard? You may well get nervous when you see a magpie at this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1250,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}