Birds of a Feather....

I have signed up for a online workshop called Magic Fairy Wool. I am really looking forward to this and my lovely bag of rainbow wool all the way from Australia is ready and waiting. Very recently I read the list of supplies required for the course and I have most all of them except for two, a wool needle and the feathers you need to make the little birds shown in the post linked above.

Now craft shop feathers of the sort you can buy in the supermarket tend to be very bright and garish. Certainly not light and fluffy. To get nicer feathers I would need to go into town, find someone with birds or find some feathers. As I sat in work I considered that someone upstairs sometimes brings in eggs....

Still considering I went off to lunch and wtahced my magpies, and fed them as normal. The book has helped me understand better what is going on and what to pay attention to. I know the long bank used to be all one territory but now, after many ceremonial gatherings - a social device used by pairs with no territory to edge their way in, the bank is now divided in two. I feed the birds and one end and sometimes watch the birds at the other.

There is a baby bird, probably male because he is larger. He has fluffy feathers interspersed in his plummage and often sits low to the ground and fluffs himself up. There is Mummy bird is smaller and sleaker. Mummy and baby are less bold. Baby does not often stick around if Daddy turns up. Daddy is big and bold and clever. It is Daddy who sussed me out and comes and asks for food and comes the closest to get it. Often being scolded into sharing by Mummy, who did not dare to come so close.

Baby and Mummy often watch me for food and I reckon they let Daddy know when it has turned up. Then Baby goes off to do whatever Baby does....

So today I fed them. Baby vanished and Daddy turned up and got the food Mummy had been to scared to get. I saw her with some so he must have shared it to. I had a stale corn cake from yesterday so I was being quite generous. The two birds were just taking off with a piece of corn cake in beak each when four or five seagulls swopped down. One went for one of the magpies - it all happened so quick I don't know who. The magpie swopped off, still with food, leaving a puff of little feathers behind.

I felt pretty outraged.

No way was I going to feed those seagulls and they knew it and quickly left. I had time to feed the magpies again before the end of my break and I am glad to say I saw Mummy and Daddy and both seemed fine. I guess I know now why Baby goes and hides when the food comes out... For the gulls would surely go for him...

When I left the car I could see little fluffy feathers caught on the bank in the grass. I picked up those I could see, that had not been swept away by the wind. Little beautiful pieces of fluff, soft downy underfeathers. Nine of them. Mostly black but all but a couple have white ends, some more white than others.

A gift from the Univers. From my totem. very unexpected. very appreciated. very useful.

but I so hope that the magpie was not injured and is going to be fine. I know feathers regrow...

If I could have had any feathers for my little wooly birds, then of course, magpie feathers would have the most meaning for me. I have never been gifted with magpie feathers before, ever. Years of watching them. But here they are, just when my own little bird creations need their own wings....