This morning, husband witnessed a cat pounce on a magpie at the park. I think the cat was most likely Charlie.
Then, the magpie hopped as fast as she could while being pursued by the cat. One wing looked injured and had “dropped” down.
When I reached the park, the magpie had already gone under the roots of a big tree and husband was trying to locate her and chase away Charlie at the same time. Lizzie was also there and barking. Maybe Lizzie was trying to help the bird too? Creamy was around as well.
It was very dangerous for the magpie.
Up on the trees, other magpies had also come around to help. The injured magpie’s partner flew down to help too.
At the tree roots, finally, the magpie came out but understandly, she was very scared. I was afraid stress itself might be very detrimental to her life. There was nothing much we could do.
But husband continued to monitor her while I went back to keep Creamy, Lizzie and Gerald away from her.
The magpie came out from hiding and started hopping and landed up in the drain. From the drain, it was a case of “playing chase”.
I remember we had a butterfly net from long ago when we had to rescue/catch Heidi last time. Heidi had run away and was bleeding badly from the mouth (as it turned out, we failed to catch her, but she came back later and it was just a bad tooth – all was well after that). So I told husband to go look for that butterfly net.
He found it stashed away in the storeroom!
With the butterfly net, we tried to catch the magpie, but she was very, very smart. The moment she saw the net, she hopped away in the opposite direction.
It seeemd a totally impossible task; we could only hope that the wing would recover on its own. We also noticed that that injured wing wasn’t drooping as much anymore.
Just then, Lizzie’s adopter drove past. He stopped to ask what we were doing and proceeded to help us.
By then, the magpie had gone under the steps but was still inside the drain. With husband on one end with the butterfly net and Lizzie’s adopter, Mr P, on the other end with an umbrella, it took some time, but we finally got the magpie into the net, but she hopped away onto the road and went under Mr P’s car!
Oh dear….we had to take care of traffic (luckily it was a Sunday) and make sure the magpie remained safe.
The magpie hopped out from under the car and went onto the park again. Finally, husband managed to trap her using the butterfly net!
Luckily Mr P has an icebox in his car, so with some effort, we got the magpie into the icebox.
Mr P and his daughter knows how to nurse animals and he says the magpie would need a splint for her wing to heal, so Mr P would take the magpie back home.
We are so, so lucky that Mr P had driven past. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been successful in helping the magpie.
Meanwhile, Lizzie watched the entire episode from outside our gate. I went back and she allowed me to pat her head. Unfortunately, Mr P did not have a collar and leash with him, otherwise, I might have been able to leash Lizzie. There has been complaints from the neighbourhood about Lizzie lately, so we really have to secure her and get her neutered. That would be the next project, hopefully we will succeed soon.
No photos were taken of the magpie. The rescue was more important than taking pictures!