Swooping season: How one angry magpie injured 15 people in 42 recorded swoops

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Australia’s “angriest bird”, a magpie living along the Woden Valley cycle paths in Canberra, injured 15 people in 12 months, including a cyclist who broke her collarbone after falling off her bike trying to flee its attack.

That tally earned the bird top place on website Magpie Alert’s top 10 “angry bird” list of 2024, which also commemorated a magpie living in Ormond Park on Melbourne’s Moonee Ponds Creek Trail, who developed a particular taste for cyclists’ ears, and a magpie in Parry Street, Cooks Hill, in NSW, with a 100 per cent strike rate of seven injuries inflicted in seven swoops.

It’s the time of the year when magpies are swooping, like this attack in Melbourne.

This year, Australians have logged almost 900 swooping reports to Magpie Watch, resulting in 13 injuries.

When winter comes to an end and days grow longer, Australian magpies begin building their nests. For them, it marks the lead-up to chicks emerging from their eggs. For us, it’s the beginning of swooping season.

Sometimes, it turns deadly. Emeritus Professor Darryl Jones, a behavioural ecologist and magpie expert and enthusiast, describes such an encounter from the 1950s, when a cyclist being chased by a swooping magpie apparently braked, causing the magpie’s beak to slam into their vertebrae. Rider and bird were both killed instantly.

Australian suburbs – with their well-watered lawns and scattered trees – offer prime habitat for magpies, which have far higher population densities in cities and suburbs than in the bush.

While other birds swoop – people also report being swooped by noisy miners, magpie larks, kookaburras, red wattlebirds, grey butcherbirds and masked lapwings – most reported bird attacks are carried out by magpies.

Why do they do it?

Swooping magpies are – without exception – male, said Jones.

“One of his many jobs is to keep predators away from the nest,” Jones said. “The reason for magpies to swoop people is for some reason, they’re treating people as predators. So they treat us exactly like they would a snake or a dingo or a goanna that’s climbing up to the nest.”

“It’s nothing to do with hair colours, or the colour of your clothes, or any of those sorts of things. The only thing is if you act threateningly to the magpies.”

Darryl Jones is one of Australia’s pre-eminent magpie experts.

Jones cautions that this doesn’t mean people who are swooped deserve it – only that a magpie thinks they do. People who spend time looking up at trees could be targeted if a magpie thinks they’re scoping out their nest, like a legitimate predator would do.

BirdLife Australia senior adviser Sean Dooley said only about 10 per cent of male magpies swoop, and it was often a learnt behaviour.

“It’s most likely that if a magpie swoops, it’s had a negative interaction with people around its nest in previous times, and it sees people or, more often, people who resemble that individual they’ve had a negative interaction with, as their target,” Dooley said.

Magpie swooping season can make for a hairy ride for cyclists.

“The most targeted group are cyclists, and that’s probably because the magpie hasn’t got time to work out who they are, [as] they’re coming towards them fast, which is a threat in itself – obviously, a predator is going to come into the nest pretty quickly.”

Do magpies recognise people’s faces?

“They absolutely know people,” Jones said.

“We’ve tested 330 different types of faces, even using masks, and they definitely can remember [people]. Now, what that means is magpies never leave their territory once they’ve settled down, unless there’s a death of mate.

“They stay in that spot the whole of their lives, which might be 20 years ... If it’s in an ordinary suburban street somewhere, there’s probably around about 20 to 30 people who live in that area, and those magpies will know every one of those individuals, without a doubt.”

Magpies “absolutely” know people who they perceive as predators, experts say.

That’s bad news if a magpie takes against you.

Jones and a former student conducted an experiment in which the student stood every day under a tree that magpies were nesting in. After five days, an alarmed male magpie began to swoop him.

“The incredible thing was, he went away, got a job somewhere, [and] came back to do a PhD with me six years later … and we went out to the same site, and he walked out of the car and [said], ‘Hey, wait a minute, I know where this is’, and the next thing – whack – he was hit in the back of the head by that same magpie.”

Can you stop a magpie swooping you?

Like many of us, magpies can be led by their stomachs. It’s a controversial method, but Jones said one way to befriend a magpie that’s swooping is by offering some food.

Dooley said an estimated 30 per cent of Australians reported feeding birds, although it is generally not recommended people encourage wild birds to rely on humans for food.

“If people insist on feeding birds, remember that it’s for your benefit more than theirs,” he said.

“But if you insist, the key is to not make it harmful, and one element of that is nutrition.”

If you choose to go down this route, it’s recommended you follow some simple rules: no processed food including sausages and bacon; no sugar, salt or fat; and definitely no bread.

A small amount of fresh meat or pet food is the best option (although mince is not recommended).

With the threat of bird flu looming over Australia, Dooley said, people should ensure feeding stations are regularly sterilised or disinfected.

Where are the magpie swooping hotspots?

Unsurprisingly, if you’ve been swooped before you’re more likely to think your city has the most magpie swoops. Despite Sydneysiders recording the most swoops on the self-reported Magpie Alert, Jones and Dooley said Canberra was – per capita – Australia’s magpie swooping capital.

Tasmania, which is home to a different subspecies of magpies, only rarely records magpie attacks.

Australian magpies are a protected species, and it is illegal to harm them or collect their eggs.

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