For the past couple of years we’ve had a family of magpies living in our eucalypt. They built their nest there in the spring and have been living happily ever since. The pair have had two sets of chicks since that year and this year have added a couple of colourful additions to their nest including a shiny bottle cap and red ribbon. My partner and I love hearing their birdcall in the morning. IT’s a very soothing way to start the day!

Sadly, we recently had to call a Melbourne tree removal company. The eucalyptus tree was getting way too big for the backyard, getting the way of powerlines and upsetting the earth under the foundation of the house. We didn’t know what we were going to do about the poor family of magpied. Obviously we didn’t want to just lop down their home in the tree felling process. I thought of those poor little birds flying back to their nest in the evening to find their bed completely vanished. Then I started to worry that they’d even lid some eggs already as it was coming into spring and I didn’t want to destroy the poor hatchlings.

What we did was we pulled out the old ladder and climbed up to the nest. Thankfully, there were no egg inside. We thought we’d take the nest out and put it in another tree .Perhaps the birds would never go back to it and have to build a new one but at least we did what we could. I was just thankful that we weren’t hurting the baby birds at all. After putting the nest in a nearby tree, we left the rest to the Melbourne arborist. They did a nice clean job of felling the tree, but hopefully we won’t have to go through this again. I’d hate to destroy another bird’s home.