I was bombed by my first magpie ever this morning. How I managed to live in Australia for twenty years and never have a close encounter of the sharp-beaked black-and-white kind before, I really don't know, but I managed it.

Anyway, I was walking along a path I usually walk along, but for obvious reasons have not been frequenting in the last month. My thought process went something like: "There's a magpie over there looking at me, but that's all right because it's on the ground and oh look, there's another one here and it's sort of greyish and it's not flying away from me it's just hopping, that would probably be because it's just a young one and oh shit."

That's about when the magpie hit me.