They are fabulous aren't they.
Many years ago, a large gum on the block next door, that a family of magpies had their nest in was felled ready for a house to be built. As soon as it came down, Rhoda ran over to make sure there were no babies in the nest. Thankfully there wasn't but she was amazed by the nest which she retrieved.
Apart from the normal things you would expect to find, there were a couple of wire coat hangers and three of four of those small plastic trellis things that people used to put into a small pot plant for the plant to climb on (never ever saw them work). But the pièce de résistance was a bonnet cable that had been woven around the outside of nest a couple of times with just the handle sticking out.
We showed it to a friend of ours who was a Zoologist at the Uni of Qld and he suggested we take it to the Qld Museum which we did and the nest was on display there for a number of years. We visited the museum a couple of years ago and asked about it and the attendant recognised what we were talking about immediately and told us that it was still at the museum but was currently down in storage but was brought out when it suited the display theme at the time.
Many years ago, a large gum on the block next door, that a family of magpies had their nest in was felled ready for a house to be built. As soon as it came down, Rhoda ran over to make sure there were no babies in the nest. Thankfully there wasn't but she was amazed by the nest which she retrieved.
Apart from the normal things you would expect to find, there were a couple of wire coat hangers and three of four of those small plastic trellis things that people used to put into a small pot plant for the plant to climb on (never ever saw them work). But the pièce de résistance was a bonnet cable that had been woven around the outside of nest a couple of times with just the handle sticking out.
We showed it to a friend of ours who was a Zoologist at the Uni of Qld and he suggested we take it to the Qld Museum which we did and the nest was on display there for a number of years. We visited the museum a couple of years ago and asked about it and the attendant recognised what we were talking about immediately and told us that it was still at the museum but was currently down in storage but was brought out when it suited the display theme at the time.
We were really chuffed.