Gisela Kaplan, perhaps the foremost expert on the Australian magpie has put it: “magpies are extremely polite and formal birds—they have real etiquettes and breaking them makes them frustrated, confused and sometimes angry.”34 At this stage at least, Brisbane’s crows seem to be doing things a little differently. Darryl believes that they are using only “warning swoops” (that is, not making physical contact) and relying on this gesture to make their intentions known. The effectiveness of such an approach remains to be seen; it rests in large part on the capacity
