Maggie magpie and Minnie noisy-miner Keep Me Safe From A Snake

On this occasion it was my good old friends Maggie and Minnie again.  (Though the picture on the left of the two together is from a different occasion.)   

Readers who read my first blog post in this 30 day challenge on 'Inter-species friendships in Birds' will remember them.

Maggie who was always happy to see me squawked as if I had deeply offended him.  At first I felt really strange listening to his reaction, but when I followed his actions, I realised that there was snake lurking in the grass nearby just where I was heading towards.  Maggie was actually trying to stop me from going there.

I ran inside and got the camera, by then the snake had moved into the long grass.

The snake was a carpet python (more commonly called a tree snake) which fortunately is not deadly to humans.  But it can eat birds and I have seen photographs of it eating an adult magpie.  Sorry for mentioning this gruesome detail, but I did want to make the point that they are an immense danger to the birds. So when Maggie and his family  came over to chase the magpie out of my path, they were being very brave indeed.  Maggie put himself between me and the snake.  While Minnie and her family, Vicky and her kids squawked and chased the snake away. Click here for the slideshow.

Magpies, butcherbirds and noisy miners are generally misunderstood and not very popular birds - all for different reasons.  In recent years more people  have begun to understand them and attitudes are changing.

Some of my readers who have befriended these birds have commented that their yards are also generally free of snakes.