This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Batson with my good mate, Jeremy Zackis.

He's in New South Wales with his 10-year-old Spoodle, Dallas. We began this conversation about Dallas thinking,

oh, the magpies have adopted Dallas, and he's being very philanthropic, sharing his food with the magpies. What's unusual here is

that magpies, I've learned, are very territorial, also smart, they're brainy. And there's a magpie

family living in the yard, and each morning the magpie family awaits its treats. Let's put it that way. Jeremy's been instructed to buy a

certain kind of ham and a certain kind of treat. And Dallas shares. Last week, there was a theme

introduced that was unusual. Dallas was acquiring other bird types, different body sizes,

other friendly birds, not hostile birds, no crows yet, to my

knowledge.

Now there's the suggestion that Dallas is, well, you'd say that Dallas has gone to an orphanage

to collect children from all parts of Australia.

Jeremy, I can't tell.

Is Dallas doing this wittingly or the birds taking advantage of an old softie?

I wish I knew, John.

I think in some ways it may be the latter, but all I can say, John, is that now not only

do we have the magfires, not only do we have the minor birds, which was last week's

addition to the family, we have some sparrows around only do we have the minor birds, which was last week's addition to the

family, we have some sparrows around, but I now have to deal with pied carawongs as well.

And just to put it in perspective, John, a pied carawong is around about the same size of the

magpie. It looks a little bit like a crow, although it has some white and yellow features

that actually soften up as edges. But these are

fairly large birds and these are not, I guess you could say, regular birds in this area.

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