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This experience that I have portrayed in La Vanguardia’s Readers’ Photos has moved me. There was an injured magpie on the pavement of the Pedralbes monastery in Barcelona.
It seems like she was kind of dazed. She has been left in the sun under a cypress, sheltered. And, after a while, her partner came to her side, looking at her carefully.
It has been a very impressive scene to be able to observe on the ground how birds also have their feelings and, in this specific case, to what extent the magpies are considerate of each other.
It is even more curious because, the next day, another magpie came, which also seemed to keep company with the one that was as if dead.
This is not strange, because it has even been proven that these birds mourn their dead and even attend the funerals they organize as, let’s say, a farewell.
Marc Bekoff, a scientist at the University of Colorado, found in an article in Emotion, Space and Society that magpies say goodbye to their fallen friends, which shows that they are much more sensitive than they seem.
In the same way as this scene experienced in the Pedralbes monastery, Dr. Bekoff observed four magpies next to a dead companion and reported: “One approached the corpse, pecked it gently, just as an elephant would nibble the corpse of another elephant.” , and took a step back. Another magpie did the same.”
“Then one of the magpies flew out, brought some grass and put it next to the body. Another magpie did the same. Then the four stayed awake for a few seconds and one by one they flew away,” he explained.
“We can’t know what they were really thinking or feeling, but reading their action there is no reason not to believe that these birds were saying goodbye to their magpie friend,” he noted.
Specialists in animal cognition and emotion such as Barbara J. King, professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at the College of William
But, in this case, the story has been even more surprising, because the magpie that seemed dead and on which the others had gathered in the Pedralbes monastery, turns out not to have died in the end. A worker, upon approaching this bird, found it alive, moving its head and having its eyes open. The wonderful thing is how her other classmates have not abandoned her. Now, in this cypress you can hear many magpies. None is alone, alive or dead.
