Magpies mourning?! (1 Viewer)

[nparmar]

I am a keen birdwatchcer and am particularly keen on Magpies because from what I have observed, they are intelligent.

Just 30 minutes ago I heard a couple of magpies making a huge racket! I know that they only make this noise when they're troubled by something. Then one by one, more and more magpies started congregating in this tree and making even more of a racket! When I looked outside below the tree, I saw a dead magpie on the road - it think it had just happened. I couldn't believe how many Magpies came around for this!

They are without doubt an intelligent bird, and I'd be really interested to know exactly what's going through their minds when they congregated around this dead Magpie. It must be something along the lines of mourning or saying "goodbye". Very weird to witness, but very interesting!

 

[David FG]

I am a keen birdwatchcer and am particularly keen on Magpies because from what I have observed, they are intelligent.

Just 30 minutes ago I heard a couple of magpies making a huge racket! I know that they only make this noise when they're troubled by something. Then one by one, more and more magpies started congregating in this tree and making even more of a racket! When I looked outside below the tree, I saw a dead magpie on the road - it think it had just happened. I couldn't believe how many Magpies came around for this!

They are without doubt an intelligent bird, and I'd be really interested to know exactly what's going through their minds when they congregated around this dead Magpie. It must be something along the lines of mourning or saying "goodbye". Very weird to witness, but very interesting!

Intelligent they may be, but I think attributing anything like 'mourning', 'grieving' or 'saying goodbye' is pushing it a bit far. (To say the least.)

More likely preparing to indulge in a newly-available food source...

 

[ChrisKten]

LOL, you beat me to it, David; that's more or less exactly what I was about to type.

They are very smart, but I can't see how we can ever say much more than that.

 

[Steve Schoech]

Alternatively, concern regarding a depredation and where there's a body, there's inevitably a predator about. Corvids mobbing predators is a regular event. Though it sounds as if the predator in this case was an automobile!

 

[David FG]

Alternatively, concern regarding a depredation and where there's a body, there's inevitably a predator about. Corvids mobbing predators is a regular event. Though it sounds as if the predator in this case was an automobile!

That's true.

Dead bird = threat from something.

 

[carjug]

I beg to differ.
A parrot named Alex was studied by a researcher, (Yale?) for some years, and found to have real speech. One evening, the researcher took the parrot home, and the parrot saw an owl outside the window. The mortified parrot began screaming BACK! , and did not shut-up until the researcher took it -back- to the laboratory.
The dang birds are smarter than we give them credit for. The magpies could have been mourning.

 

[David FG]

I beg to differ.
A parrot named Alex was studied by a researcher, (Yale?) for some years, and found to have real speech. One evening, the researcher took the parrot home, and the parrot saw an owl outside the window. The mortified parrot began screaming BACK! , and did not shut-up until the researcher took it -back- to the laboratory.
The dang birds are smarter than we give them credit for. The magpies could have been mourning.

So, a parrot sees a predator and calls in alarm?

Pretty much what we were saying. You are going to have to come up with something a bit better than that, I'm afraid.

 

[stonechat1]

Alternatively, concern regarding a depredation and where there's a body, there's inevitably a predator about. Corvids mobbing predators is a regular event. Though it sounds as if the predator in this case was an automobile!

Correct Steve, maybe an overlooked predator in the tree?

 

[nparmar]

1. David FG - so I have seen Magpies eat other birds, other bird's eggs, mice, etc. There is no way the other magpies were congregating to eat another magpie! At no point did any magpie go down or try to eat the dead one.

2. ChrisKten - I have been observing magpies for a very long time. If someone had told me what I posted, I too would not have believed it! I can guarantee that if you saw what I saw yesterday, you would have a very different opinion.

3. Steve Schoech - There were no predators about (or cars!). The only thing I did see was an old lady walking past who was so annoyed by the racket the magpies were making, that she moved the dead magpie from the road and onto a grass verge. When she walked over to do that, the magpies quietened down rather than mobbed her. As soon as she walked a fair distance away, they started their racket again!

4. Stonechat1 - I can 100% confirm that there were no other predators in the tree. It's a fairly small tree, and it filled up with magpies only.

So anyway, last night a Fox took the magpie away for dinner! This morning at around 05:00am the magpies returned to the same spot and atarted making a racket again! I looked outside to see if another one had died, but no. They have never done this before otherwise I would have heard them. It just seems too much of a coincidence.

I swear that if you all saw this, you would be thinking the same thing as me. It's either some kind of saying goodbye or mourning.

 

[Apodemus]

.........I swear that if you all saw this, you would be thinking the same thing as me. It's either some kind of saying goodbye or mourning.

No way. You have observed some fascinating behaviour, but any talk of mourning or saying goodbye is just you projecting your own human feelings on to a completely different species. It's very tempting to do so, and we all do it to some extent, sometimes influenced by soppy "wildlife" documentaries but it would be far more productive to try and see things as the magpie sees them and try to understand what's really going on there.

 

[ChrisKten]

I swear that if you all saw this, you would be thinking the same thing as me. It's either some kind of saying goodbye or mourning.

In one way, it does no harm thinking as you do, but in another, you can fail to see what might actually be happening. I've been observing Nature seriously for over 40 years, and I've been closely studying birds, and their behaviour, for hours each day for the last few years (I have over 100 birds in my garden, including Magpies, and am able to observe them for at least 6 hours a day). I can assure you that, had I seen what you witnessed, I would not have thought that the birds were grieving.

All Animals are much smarter than we give them credit for, but they are not Human. Emotion isn't a requirement for survival, in fact it often gets in the way of it.

Again, no harm done thinking as you do, but you won't convince many here to think the same.

 

[Adam W]

Intelligent they may be, but I think attributing anything like 'mourning', 'grieving' or 'saying goodbye' is pushing it a bit far. (To say the least.)

More likely preparing to indulge in a newly-available food source...

I strongly suspect this first answer may well be the correct one.

 

[nparmar]

I have to disagree. I think you need to forget that we are humans for a minute.... we are animals first and human second. So then you must remember that these things like "emotion" that some people seem to think are purely human are also most probably deep rooted within most mammals and birds too (in some form).

Why do you say that other animals can't have some kind of basic emotion - especially intelligent ones? Is what we feel human feeling or animal instinct?

And there is no way the magpies were looking to eat the dead magpie - there was no attempt made by any of them to try to eat it.

So even more crazy then, perhaps it was some kind of ritual they've developed?!

 

[abi107]

I have read about magpie funerals before, but never seen one.

See this article: http://thepoormouth.blogspot.com/2009/10/magpie-funeral-rites.html about a study on magpies grieving.

 

[abi107]

Or read about this researcher, Chuck Trost, who sets up a magpie funeral by delibrately placing out a dead bird. http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=05-P13-00021&segmentID=7
I like his explanation the best:

"It's probably trying to see what killed it and mostly I think what it is is they're trying to see who it is. Because they know each other, magpies know each other, and whenever there's a dead magpie, that means there's an opening in the social system. And if you're a submissive magpie you can move up one notch."

 

[Adam W]

I have to disagree. I think you need to forget that we are humans for a minute.... we are animals first and human second. So then you must remember that these things like "emotion" that some people seem to think are purely human are also most probably deep rooted within most mammals and birds too (in some form).

Why do you say that other animals can't have some kind of basic emotion - especially intelligent ones? Is what we feel human feeling or animal instinct?

And there is no way the magpies were looking to eat the dead magpie - there was no attempt made by any of them to try to eat it.

So even more crazy then, perhaps it was some kind of ritual they've developed?!

I personally think its a mistake to try and humanise other animals which leads to people seeing what they want to see when there is perhaps another answer for what is going on.
Maybe birds can have the same emotions as humans but there are so many other things that birds do that contradicts this, if birds shared the same emotions as us then when you consider the average life of a wild bird they would all be emotional wrecks and it just wouldnt make sense for them to be designed to be that way, where as us on the other hand have relatively speaking far less traumatic lives so we can cope better with having these emotions.

 

[ChrisKten]

I have to disagree. I think you need to forget that we are humans for a minute.... we are animals first and human second. So then you must remember that these things like "emotion" that some people seem to think are purely human are also most probably deep rooted within most mammals and birds too (in some form).

Why do you say that other animals can't have some kind of basic emotion - especially intelligent ones? Is what we feel human feeling or animal instinct?

And there is no way the magpies were looking to eat the dead magpie - there was no attempt made by any of them to try to eat it.

So even more crazy then, perhaps it was some kind of ritual they've developed?!

Yes, we are Animals, and we have things in common with other Animals; the urge to reproduce - the need to eat and drink to stay alive - and many other things. But we don't have everything in common with other Animals.

As for the Magpies, unless they start leaving bunches of flowers and "Sorely Missed" notes at the spot where the other Magpie died, I still see no reason to believe that they were "mourning".

 

[Atricapilla]

Correct Steve, maybe an overlooked predator in the tree?

Or on a wall,there were 8 magpies mobbing this cat the other day,sorry about the quality of the shot)

 

[Apodemus]

Or on a wall,there were 8 magpies mobbing this cat the other day,sorry about the quality of the shot)

No apologies needed. I love that shot, it has fabulous colours and an abstract quality. It would make a good painting.

 

[Atricapilla]

No apologies needed. I love that shot, it has fabulous colours and an abstract quality. It would make a good painting.

OK , maybe like this.