If you’re a cyclist, you’re not imagining it – the magpies really are after you.
Statistics for the Australian magpies’ 2025 breeding season show almost two in three swooping attacks are on cyclists. And the best thing to do?
Slow down. Get off the bike and walk, even. Step away from the nest, if you can tell where it is.
The magpie swooping season lasts about six weeks in the spring. Magpies are smart, social and occasionally savage. They are very protective of their nests and see passing humans as threats. Fast-moving cyclists pose a particular danger in the eyes of the magpies.
“During this time, they will defend their nests and chicks, but also defend their surrounding territory,” the Australian Museum’s website says.
“Male adults are using their body language – beak clapping, whooshing above your head and screeching – to warn you to keep away from their eggs or newly hatched chicks.”
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That “beak clapping” can draw blood, especially from tender human ears.
BirdLife Australia’s Sean Dooley says the speed of a bike is a major factor in their swooping. His theory is that it freaks the magpie out more.
“Something more dangerous is likely to be moving fast,” he says.
“If there’s a predator coming, it’s not going to saunter in. A currawong, an eagle, they’re going to rush in really quickly.”
Not all magpies are aggressive, but those that are can also remember and continue to target the same people. But that facial recognition ability means they can also develop lifelong friendships with humans.
A swiftly approaching cyclist also means the magpie has less time to decide whether the human is friend or foe, Dooley says, so it has to react. Addionally, helmets and sunglasses can render the human indistinguishable from others.
According to Magpie Alert, a community website set up by avid cyclist Jon Clarke, 63.9% of the 3,431 attacks reported so far this season have been on people riding bikes.
Most of the rest were swoops on people walking or running, including with dogs and prams.
The number of attacks is slightly up on the six-year average, and 11.3% or 389 resulted in injury.
And this year, there have been two reports of swooping from Tasmania, where, along with the Northern Territory and Western Australia, attacks are exceedingly rare, at least compared to the other states.
Dooley says that may be because there are subspecies of magpies, and that magpies are not evenly distributed across the country – there are none in Darwin, for example.
In 2017, the Australian magpie beat the bin chicken and the laughing kookaburra to take out Guardian Australia/BirdLife Australia’s annual bird of the year poll.
This year’s poll opens on Monday.
Traditional methods to deal with swooping magpies include putting cable ties or pipe cleaners on helmets, wearing ice-cream containers with fake eyes on the back of the head or holding umbrellas aloft for the bird to focus on.
Dooley says none of these ruses will work every time, and the best thing to do is get away from the nest they’re protecting.
“Stop, backtrack, get out of the swooping zone,” he says.
“Take evasive action. It’s counterintuitive because you feel like your life’s being threatened, but they’re not out to kill you; they’re just out to scare you off.
“Don’t overreact because that will entrench the belief the magpie has that you’re a danger.”
