An Uncertain Future by Geoffrey Maslen

Author:Geoffrey Maslen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hardie Grant
Published: 2017-05-11T04:00:00+00:00

Not only can the magpie change the pitch of its song over four octaves, but the bird has also been known to mimic more than thirty-five species of native and introduced bird species, as well as dogs and horses, as discussed below – which places it in the same class as lyrebirds, whose own amazing capacities are outlined in chapters 13 and 14. Ornithologists say that magpies are also capable of mimicking human speech when living close to people, although after a lifetime of listening to them I’ve not heard one, nor have I seen a bird that has been caged for years that can speak. But the evidence from studies is clear – they are excellent mimics.

Professor Gisela Kaplan has a chapter on mimicry and imitation in her book Bird Minds, where she discusses magpies as mimics and relates their capacity to mimic other birds to ‘cognitive complexity’.2 After spending ten years searching for and analysing magpie mimicry, Kaplan identified twenty-eight types of ‘unambiguous mimicry’ – not just confined to the songs of other birds, but the sounds mammals make as well, notably dogs barking and horses neighing. She says magpies also produce imitations of the human voice and can whistle ‘in an almost human fashion’:

My recordings include phrases such as ‘Go away’ and ‘I’ve got dinner for you’ … [but] mimicry in magpies is a small subset of sounds within an extraordinarily large repertoire …

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