Birds

[several_bees]

Today I went in search of a sleeping pelican, as sleeping pelicans are pretty much the best thing ever: great big pelican lumps, heads turned backwards and beaks buried in feathers, and then they wake up and gradually unfold, swivelling out and blinking open their glaring peevish eyes

Comments

[ruudboy]

They swoop from below? Does that still count as swooping.

Swoop. Swoop swoop swoop swoop swoop.

[several_bees]

A dedicated magpie-lark can swoop from anywhere. It can swoop from an alternate dimension if it wants.

[thewronghands]

[wormhole] *pop* SWOOP glare *pop*

[hoshuteki]

The OED does say "To make a rapid sweeping descent through the air upon its prey, as a bird" (its emphasis), but that's the OED, not the OAD. In fact, I'd argue it makes the birds seem MORE DANGEROUS that they might so upset even our language.

[the_elyan]

Ah - so the drop-bears have taken to wings then? Eek.

Incidentally, totally random question - can you recommend a decent, reasonably lightweight history of modern Autralia (cultural and social, as well as political)? I've picked up enough bits and pieces from other reading that I'd like to stitch it together. I have Barry Humphries' Flashbacks somewhere, which is a start...

[dominitus]

As someone who's been swooped on a couple of occasions, and know at least one person who has been swoop-attacked so badly that she had blood pouring down her face from a head wound (and this is aside from the stories you hear of them actually doing some REAL damage, like, say, to your eyes), I would definitely want to be warned if there was any chance at all that I was walking in to an area that was known to be populated by nesting magpies.

The little shits scare me enough in the off-seasons, let alone when they're actually nesting.

[several_bees]

I do recall kids who wore ice-cream containers on their heads on the way to school, in order to get by possible magpie-lark nesting areas.