After hearing about how Penguin the magpie made the Bloom family better humans, we thought we’d share more of Penguin’s amazing story. Cameron Bloom tells us more about this incredible magpie.
All photography by Cameron Bloom.
How did Penguin the magpie come to be part of your family?
Sam and my son Noah were visiting her mum for lunch one day at Bilgola Beach in NSW. After lunch, Noah noticed a baby magpie that had blown out of its nest – it was an incredibly windy day. She would have been only about three weeks old and was very fragile. I was working that day, and when I got home Sam and the kids were all so excited saying “look what we found!”. It was a little overwhelming because a baby magpie is the sort of animal that needs care instantly. I quickly got on the phone to my friend who’s a vet and he just said: “Oh Cam, it’s going to be a really big undertaking if you’re going to look after it, but here’s what you need to do to get started.” He gave me a whole list of things that we needed to do in terms of food, how often we needed to feed it and we were obviously at the same time doing research as well. Gradually, she just got stronger and it went on it from there.
When did she start to become more independent?
It’s a gradual thing, much like a child where they learn to walk – crawling first and then walking. She was coming a little more adventurous and we would take her outside all the time when she was young so she was used to being on the grass. She wasn’t flying then. We’d wiggle our finger in the grass and try to encourage her to see things in the garden and look for things. Still at a young age, up until four months or so, she was still being fed by us. It’s gradual process of them looking for food themselves, finding little bites and going ‘yeah, that’s yummy’ and then still coming home for the bigger meals – the kangaroo mince and so on. It’s a slow process that certainly doesn’t happen overnight.
Tell us about Penguin’s personality.
Because she was the only magpie, Penguin was really isolated, she just had us as her family. Magpies are incredibly territorial so the other magpies around our house didn’t like Penguin and used to get bombed a lot. She felt incredibly safe in our house and she felt like that was her home. She acted like she was just one of the kids, so it was just really interesting seeing her voice and her song develop. From a really young age, magpies sit in the tree and chortle and make all these sounds. Penguin started to make these really strange sounds. They were high-pitched squeals and the kids would sing to her and she would copy them back. They used to be able to copy one another and mimic each other and it was just hilarious. When she saw the boys she would sing out this unusual and unique song and then they would copy her and she would do it back and it would happen every afternoon. You never really see magpies roll over in the wild, you see them sometimes playing on their side a bit. Penguin would run down the hallway in the morning and jump up on our bed and roll over – it was really funny when she did that. She spent a lot of time lying down and nuzzling into you – she liked being close to you. It was a pretty crazy time to spend such an intimate amount of time with her as a wild bird. She was free to go all the time. She would disappear during the day and then come back. You never really knew when she was going to come home. It was so unique, for the kids especially, to have a wild bird so much a part of their lives, but still be wild and free.
Visit penguinthemagpie.com to find stockists of the book Penguin Bloom. Cameron Bloom, Bradley Trevor Greive and ABC Books are proud to donate a percentage of royalties from the sale of each copy of Penguin Bloom to support SpinalCure Australia. Follow @Penguinthemagpie on Instagram for more beautiful pics by Cameron.
Here at Petbarn, we love these amazing stories of pet parents and their animals. You can find more of these For Better Human stories here.