While we are on the subject of territorial magpies, I have been trying
to find a way of deterring a group of about half a dozen who had taken
up station in my back yard. I had no problems with them being there to
start off with - they would spend ages sorting through leaf litter
eating bugs, and so seemed to be doing me a bit of a service.

But in the last couple of weeks they seemed to start being aggressive
to other species, with one or two perching high in a tree, as though
keeping watch, while the rest went about their business. Their calls
were sounding more and more like the ³attack² cries I remember too well
from childhood springtimes and the wattle birds, honeyeaters and
wagtails that are usually around were starting to disappear.

My Father then noticed that they seemed to be intimidated when he
whistled at them. They would pause from whatever they were doing,
increase their calls and responses to each other and move away from
him. We reasoned that they may be interpreting the whistling as calls
from a bird they could not themselves intimidate.

I remembered at this point that I have a CD of native bird calls. I set
up my stereo speakers to direct the sound out into the garden and let
rip, skipping the recordings that included magpies. Because of the
nature of the recording I found that could set it repeating for a
couple of hours at a time, at quite a high volume, without it being too
intrusive - it just felt as though I was in an aviary.

The statistics of single events is notoriously misleading, but in less
than a week my garden is empty of magpies and the other species have
returned. I can still hear the magpies at times - they seem to have
chosen another yard a few houses away - but they are no longer being
territorial in mine.

I¹d be interested to hear if others have similar success.