I saw something out of the ordinary today…

[boatyardblues]

I heard high pitched squeaking as I walked to my car and saw a magpie drop a live mouse on the pavement and then peck at it. I didn’t know magpies could catch mice.

What did you see today that you weren’t expecting?

Just found a live blue budgie in my bbq! The lid was ajar and as I lifted it, the bird flew out!

I had a magpie in my house this summer. It was massive and just flapping about by my back door.I got up to see what the noise was and did not expect that! Had to get my dog because I thought she might pounce but she just tilted her head as bemused as me! I opened the double doors and put it went.

Saw my elderly neighbour stick two fingers up at a cat this morning as it walked across her garden. We saw someone walking a rabbit on a lead outside the supermarket, then we saw someone in the supermarket poking holes in the pastries with their finger, and we arrived home to find the dog stood on the dining table with a rogue pea stuck to his face. It’s been an odd day to say the least.

@Martz the first one made me laugh so much! 😂

She’s usually really a kind and gentle old lady too… or at least she appeared to be! 🤣

Depends on the bird. Some falcons and hawks can do this - pigeons are what they go for. Peregrines definitely do.

Apparently, as falcons also migrate, although I think it is in search of a cooler average temperature for the whole year, the birds they prey on 'learn' through the months they are back, to recognise them as a threat. Smaller birds will gang up and try to mob and divebomb the falcons, but mostly by the time the falcons are almost ready to fly to other places, not at the early bit of the season.

Wondering if all the people who would happily see native birds shot and killed would be happy to do the same with cats since they're not native and do the same thing?

Humans have a devastating effect on crows and magpies. In fact humans have a devastating effect on just about everything, including other humans. Perhaps we should make more of it and leave innocent magpies crows to doing what nature intended. And yes they are innocent as they are applying their razor sharp instinct and intellect to survive. Unlike humans who use it out of jealousy, greed, spite, revenge….and pleasure.

And whilst we’re at it, perhaps we could all stop cutting down hedgerows, getting pet cats and building crap we do not need on the habitats of nesting birds, and then there may be more food to go around for said crows and magpies. In the name of balance.

live in a condo on the second floor. This morning I was using the toilet, minding my own business, window opposite toilet (no one can see in the window cranks from bottom out) , big black bull wandering down the pavement behind us. We live in a tourist city lol

I am enjoying the randomness of some of your stories.

A beautiful painted coach packed full of very serious looking people, pulled by four identical dappled grey horses with two female grooms on the back, and someone blowing a horn, in the city centre this afternoon. I stopped to stare and husband remarked he was glad that I could see it too 😁

Oh yes that’s exactly the same thing isn’t it, shooting someone’s beloved pet. I don’t like cats or what they do to wildlife populations. I wish people had to keep them on their property by law, whether that’s indoors or fencing the garden properly to keep them in.

it would also lead to a great reduction in the never ending “whose cat is this” facebook posts so - I don’t want to say it kills two bird with one stone - but win win