PROTECT YA NECK: Warm Winter Means A Super Hectic Magpie Swooping Season

For the most part, birds are a skittish and completely useless animal. All they do is eat, poop, sleep and sing (dream life?) until they are eventually hit by a car or eaten by a domestic cat. They are some of the least terrifying animals in the animal kingdom – until they have kids.
One time when I was 11 I accidentally walked near a clutch of plover eggs and spent the next 20 minutes crying face down in the sand as they aggressively swooped me. If you’re unfamiliar with plovers, they’re the nightmare birds with bloody spikes all over them that scream at you if you even look at them during the spring. 
My point is: birds are dumb but terrifying when it’s baby season – and baby season has come early.
According to experts, thanks to the unseasonably warm winter we’ve just had, magpies have started nesting as early as July and that means we’re in for an earlier, longer and more brutal swooping season.
Dr Darryl Jones from Griffith University says we’re in for something of a ‘Birdemic: Shock And Terror‘ type situation (my words, not his):
“They’ll have one whole lot of chicks before they have their normal lot of chicks. It’s going to be a long season, I’m pretty sure.

“Magpies only attack when there are chicks in the nest, so if there are going to be more chicks, there are going to be more attacks.”

Apparently the Magpie Alert website (which I did not know existed until today) has already had 55 reported attacks before spring has even started, so, uh, time to wear your sunglasses on the back of your head and walk around with a big stick (for scaring purposes only).

Be ever vigilant.
Source: The Daily Mail.
Photo: YouTube.

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