When Magpies Attack
by Michael Langdon
I was reading an article about magpie attacks on posties (Northside Chronicle, September 24, 2003, p4), one of the handy tips on how to deal with magpie attacks was "fit an orange traffic flag". At this point I recalled another article I had read in the same paper about the only postie who delivers mail on a bicycle (July 9, 2003, p4), which raised the question of how relevant/reliable was this information? As I had worked on Cycle Queensland 2003 in the Campsite Clinic of an afternoon/evening and had treated many casualties, I was well aware of the damage that magpie attacks could cause and I was very keen to find any effective method to prevent such attacks.
As it turned out I did own an orange traffic flag that (I had never found a use for and) I had been holding on to for a while. Also, as it turned out on this particular day I was participating in QR's Off-Peak Week with bicycle activities being held at Boondall Station (6km from home) and had been swooped twice (at different locations), once on the way there and once on the way back. I was all set up to test the "handy tip" of using orange traffic flags. Later that afternoon, after working out how to attach the orange flag to the back of my bike, I returned to the locations where I had encountered previously swooping magpies. I discovered, to my disappointment, that the magpies did not swoop at either location (most probably due to the lateness of the hour and the amount of vehicular traffic on the roads). After going to all the trouble to attach the flag only to not be swooped, I didn't have the heart to remove it, and that turned out to be a good thing too. The next day when I was on my morning ride I had left the flag on and at last success, I was swooped, this bird followed me for about 500m making several dives at me.
The key weakness with a magpie attack is that they will always attack from behind, so if you have a flag waving around directly behind your head (or thereabouts), you force the magpie to pull up out of their dive early and causing them to miss your head completely. Other methods that I attempted have met with only limited success, the eyes on the back of the helmet seem to be only as effective as the aggression level of the bird. A high-pressure air-horn is an effective method of scaring away an attacking magpie (or dog, or any animal for that reason), however by the time you realise you need to use the horn, it is already too late. Of course, the safest thing to do when you are on your bike and something comes flying towards you is to pull over, get off your bike and walk through the hostile territory.
The orange traffic flags are not exactly a high-demand item, and as a result if you are interested in getting your hands on one, they may be hard to come by. I was able to pick mine up at a discount as the bike shop owner had long ago given up on any chance of selling it at a profit. If you have no luck with your local bike shop, they are available for sale at Rebel Sport's Wheels in Motion, they go for about $10-$15 and are a very good investment even if you only put it on during the magpie season - from now on I will be.