24/07/2026
I was alerted yesterday to a situation of a magpie stuck on the roof of a two storey building.
The resident who lived there knew the local magpie family who visited well, and it appeared the juvenile of the family had somehow become trapped and its frantic parents were flying around trying to encourage it to free itself, but it couldn’t. This is what alerted him to the youngster who he could just see peering over the gutter. It had been there since the day before he believed.
I packed my ladder and headed over. There it was up on the roof of the 2nd storey. With the assistance of the amazing resident I climbed the ladder up onto the roof of the first storey, then pulled up the ladder to securely place it on that roof to enable me to climb up onto the roof of the second storey. Once up there I could clearly see what was going on with the young bird. It was stuck under the edges of the tiles in the gutter. How it had done that I have no idea. As I crossed the tiles to reach it the parents flew over and sat near me watching me carefully.
After pushing back one of the tiles I was able to carefully free the young magpie. One of its wings looked quite ruffled so I carefully put it into my carrier and took it back down the ladder to then take to an avian vet for a checkup, hoping it wasn’t seriously injured.
The next day was given the good news that after being xrayed and assessed the little one had no breaks, but wasn’t flying as well as it should so possibly had a soft tissue injury. It would be sent to a Wildlife Carer for rehabilitation then released back to its parents once recovered.