A new South Wales, Australia, man attempted to keep birds away from his cat's food with a homemade owl sculpture, but "accidentally made a magpie god."
Giulio Cuzzilla said he learned that magpies can be deterred with owl sculptures, but he didn't want to spend a lot of money on one, so he made his own out of paper mache and feathers.
"I now know it doesn't really look like an owl, but a dead cat rather," Cuzzilla wrote in a comment under his TikTok video.
He said the magpies initially seemed to fear his sculpture, but they eventually started to approach it and engage in behaviors Cuzzilla said seemed like "worship."
"I accidentally made a magpie god," he wrote.
Gisela Kaplan, an emeritus professor in animal behavior at the University of New England, said the magpies in the video aren't actually showing deference to the owl sculpture, they are making territorial calls to try to scare it away.
Cuzzilla said the magpie god's reign came to an end when a storm dismantled the idol. He said he has now grown a fondness for the magpies.
"When you observe their antics, you can't help but find them quite cute," he wrote. "We even named one of the babies Ricky."
Magpies are corvids, like crows, ravens, and jays.
Edit: it turns out Australian Magpies are just named after (European) magpies because they look similar to them. Above is a European Magpie, so ignore that for this story, but it's still pretty do in leaving it up. Plus it died the differences to the Australian Magpie.
Australian Magpies are just black and white without the glossy sheen and are not corvids.
I'm glad somebody told me. I'm just an enthusiast, not an expert on any of this, so I try my best to present factual info, but I don't know everything.
Plus I enjoy when you guys can teach me something back.
It does autoplay the video for me when I click on the original link I posted. I always forget TikTok has an actual website. Sorry, I'm old so I'm out of their demographic! 😅