Australian magpie

Startled starling

After a pair of doves died when trying to break in my house, a young starling only got dazed from hitting my window this morning. I head a bang and came to see a magpie attacking a young starling—without the characteristic white dots—while an older starling—with the white dots—was trying to chase the magpie away. When I opened my window, both the magpie and the older starling went away but the younger one, while alive, could not fold its wings. I called my daughter and we put the bird in a window corner on a pile of newspapers with a cup of water. After a while, the poor bird got on its legs and  hesitantly stood in the sun. A few minutes later, when we came back to check, the bird had gone away. There were a few down feathers nearby so it may be that a lucky cat found a free meal there (!), but, even though the neighbourhood is full of cats chasing birds, I doubt this is the case as we usually find a few more traces of those cat meals. Anyway, there are so many birds hitting our windows that I start to wonder if our house was built on an avian Uluru of sorts…!