44 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



time I found, to my surprise, the five eggs had gone, although the 

 birds were still there. Noticing the inside of the nest was not so 

 deep as before, I pushed my hand further down and felt the five 

 eggs. It seems that they had built a thin lining over the eggs, 

 which I first thought was to hide them away, but I found out 

 after that they had made a partial new nest on top of the other 

 and laid another clutch. The first set of eggs was poorly de- 

 veloped, and fairly easily blown. Between the laying of the two 

 sets of eggs there was an interval of some fourteen days, includ- 

 ing the time occupied in depositing the second clutch." 



In a paper recently read before this Club by Mr. D. Best, he 

 remarked that no writers have hitherto referred to the reason why 

 magpies fly at the human species when in the vicinity of their 

 nests. It seems to me a question easily answered, and on this 

 account probably no one has troubled to deal with it. However, 

 I communicated with some of my country friends, and from a 

 summing up of the observations of Messrs. J. C. Goudie, J. H. Hill, 

 • and W. J. Stephen, as well as my own, it appears that, in 

 captivity, magpies show an aversion to anyone who has annoyed 

 them, as well as to anyone who looks like the person who has 

 annoyed them. The voice of the offending person is quite 

 sufficient to startle the bird and make it rush post haste to the 

 gate to waylay or torment the arriving juvenile or lady. 

 Although it is principally children and ladies that they have a 

 grievance against, some children and ladies pass by as very 

 good friends, and no stones are picked up by the bird as if to 

 throw and injure. One magpie known to myself upon hearing 

 an enemy's voice will invariably rush to the gate, pick up a stone, 

 and try to get through the pickets with the stone in its beak, 

 Under domestication a magpie can be very pugnacious, according 

 to the provocation given, and in its wild state it is also this same 

 provocation that leads all mankind to be treated alike. Magpies 

 fly at you for a reason similar to that of a hen with its chicks in 

 danger. The male bird, and not the female, appears to be the 

 attacker of man, and the attacked is not only a man, woman, or 

 child, but may be a dog or a species of small bird, or, as is better 

 known, a hawk or crow. Small birds, as robins and acanthizse, 

 that are breeding at the same time as the magpie, may have their 

 nests pulled to pieces, or the young destroyed, or even the old 

 birds if they can be caught. It is in this respect a brutal bird. 

 Both male and female attack hawks. The magpies fly desper- 

 ately at you when either eggs or young are in the nest, as well 

 as when the latter have recently left the nest, but later its 

 pugnacity ceases. In individual cases the magpie will keep the 

 pugnacious temperament very strongly for some weeks or even 

 months, and woe betide you if you should meet such an hot- 

 tempered bird. 



