Australian magpies and European wasps: what contrasting critters. The first, Canberra's most loved native creature. The second, with its terrific sting and ever-increasing occurrences here, a foreign intruder and a major chiller of suburban spines. What happens when the paths of these two species cross?
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Sometimes this column must seem as besotted with the Australian magpie as our sports pages are besotted with Nick Kyrgios. And here we go again, leaping at the latest opportunity to write about them. Did you know that magpies are vespivores?
Reader Glen Knight advises: "Today while sitting in the sun mid-morning I observed a European wasp flitting around a part of my lawn where I feed Magpies in the evenings.
"They [the wasps] would land and then move down into the lawn to ground level, where I believe they have found tiny pieces of mince from the previous evening.
"Now this is where it gets interesting. The magpies were watching, and they moved in to the approximate area waiting for the wasps to emerge. When they did emerge the chase was on. A quick snap of the beak followed by a bit of a massage, then down the hatch. Then a look around for the next one, etc.
"I observed this behaviour for about 40 minutes, during which several magpies were involved and about 20 wasps did not get to go home. I am wondering if yourself or any other readers have seen this behaviour or if I am the only one."
At first this does seem a startling report and yet, of course, Australian magpies eat a great range of flying insects. But that they should fancy a weapon-carrying introduced species they haven't evolved to dine on is perhaps a little eyebrow-raising.
But Dr Philip Spradbery, The Wasp Man, Canberra's world authority on and nest-removing enemy of European wasps (he is to European wasps what Sir Galahad was to scapegraces and evil-doers), says that yes, he knows magpies eat them because he's seen them do it. On one memorable occasion he had just sprayed and dismembered a wasps' nest, exposing a host of groggy wasps. Magpies arrived and soon "were really hoeing into them" with gusto.
And it's no wonder, he advises, that we may see European wasps attracted to what's left of our maggie mince because wasps are mincemeat mad. Mincemeat is the very thing you use as bait when trying to attract wasps and to watch where they come from and where they go to.
Nor are magpies the only Australians dining on the introduced delicacy. Here on our page is Julian Robinson's tell-tale photograph, taken at Symonston, of a dusky woodswallow with a wasp.
Quite how magpies and other birds avoid being stung is not clear, and a European wasp's sting is a terrible thing (your columnist can testify to that) and might kill a magpie. But (as much-discussed here) scientists attest that our magpies are phenomenally clever. And, anyway, they and the woodswallows may have aeons-ago evolved techniques to safely eat Australian flying insects that sting.
Indeed almost all birds that eat flying insects must have evolved table manners that are effectively sting-avoiding. From the New Scientist blog The Last Word we learn that "the definitive source on European birds, Birds of the Western Palearctic, lists a remarkable 133 species that at least occasionally consumes wasps". "Two groups of birds are well-known for being avid vespivores [wasp eaters]. Bee-eaters routinely devour wasps, destinging them by wiping the insect vigorously against a twig or wire."
And while with birds we remind you that the Fifth Symphony of Jean Sibelius, about to be given a rare Canberra unleashing by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, was in part inspired by the divine Finn's sighting of a flight of 16 swans.
This year it is the 150th anniversary of Sibelius' birth and, as much-reported here, there is a Canberra flurry of Sibelius-related activity. Of these the CSO's playing of the Fifth is likely to be most exciting, life-affirming, soul-expanding and (with its finale) hair-raising.
CSO maestro Dr Nicholas Milton thinks that "there is no question that it is enormously challenging to play, yet musicians love to perform it, and audiences love to hear it".
Sibelius watched the swans from Ainola, his home in the countryside, a residence meant to keep the notoriously bibulous man far from the temptations of wicked Helsinki. This column's Finnish friend, artist Heikki Sivonen, has kindly given us permission to use his recent portrait of the man.
Yes, in 1915 Sibelius was wrestling with his composition of a Fifth Symphony when Nature gave him a hand. He saw and heard the swans calling to one another. "One of the great experiences of my life! God, how beautiful," he wrote in his diary.
You will hear the swans calling to one another in the last minutes of the symphony.
Like the swans, demonstrative, sometimes leaping CSO maestro Nicholas Milton may become airborne at times while conducting the Fifth. It is most likely to happen at the very end because the symphony finishes in what one scholar calls "the most famous symphonic closing of the 20th century".
We would tell you what happens but that would be a bit like spoiling Casablanca for you by telling you what in the end becomes of Rick (Humphrey Bogart).
Llewellyn Series 15.1: Sibelius is held at Llewellyn Hall, ANU, on Wednesday and Thursday, April 1 and 2 at 7.30pm. For tickets see cso.org.au.
