Stone the crows, please! It identifies as a magpie

LIKE most of you, I’ve been the victim of more than the odd magpie swoop while walking the streets of Toowoomba.

But, and I think this might be a first, I’d never before been swooped by a rogue crow until this past week.

The black bomber has been nesting in a large tree near the corner of Hume and Margaret Sts across the road from the courthouse.

Last Saturday morning, I left court with solicitor Matt Gemmell who bid “cheerio” as he crossed Hume St to his office.

It was then as I continued my walk north on Hume St that a dark cloud emerged above me followed by the unmistakeable flutter of wings.

I couldn’t believe it, a crow was bomb diving me.

Now, as most of your would know, watching someone being bomb dived by a magpie – or crow – can be a funny sight and I could help hear Matt’s laughter coming from across the road.

Bomb diving birds are a funny thing, unless you’re the one being bomb dived, that is.

I couldn’t help ask why the crow had waited for Matt to vacate the area before attacking me?

I’m not sure what was more insulting, that I was left having to duck and weave like a Michael Jackson video or that, apparently, in the aviary world, journalists are below lawyers on the pecking order.

Of course, in these days in which we live it’s quite okay for a born-andbred male to later identify as female.

So, I suppose it’s all well and good for a crow to identify as a magpie and go on bomb diving raids of unsuspecting journalists.

I must say this particular crow hasn’t quite mastered the art of bird bomb diving, but he’s probably only early into his training.

For instance, a magpie will appear out of nowhere, usually from behind, and the first the victim knows of being swooped is when he/she hears the snapping of a beak at one’s ear.

I remember being left bloody and surprised by a marauding magpie at the corner of Campbell and Hume Streets some years ago that came out of nowhere and took a chunk out of my right earlobe.

Though resembling an American air force Stealth Bomber in colour and flight, this particular crow doesn’t bother to hide his intentions and bomb dives from 2 o’clock in full sight of the target.

Yet, I must say he’s persistent. He continued his bomb diving sorties on me all the way to the old Post Office around the corner in Margaret St.

My humblest apologies to those people enjoying brunch at the front of the old Post Office last Saturday morning who were startled from their latte and croissant by the sounds of a short, fat man waving his notebook above his head while shouting all manner of obscenities at the sky.

I only hope they saw the crow or I might be in danger of being committed to the mental health ward.

On my return to the office, no-one believed that I’d been swooped by a rogue crow.

“Crows don’t do that, only magpies swoop,” was the popular theme.

Fortunately, one of the court staff who had been similarly swooped supported my report of the black bomber.

Maybe, I should have kept my crow story to myself.

At last mention, court staff were busily going through the courthouse’s security camera footage in hope of finding a recording of the attack.

What odds, if found, it ends up on social media?

I couldn’t believe it, a crow was bomb diving me.