There are the snakes, the sharks and the spiders, but no one told you about the magpies, did they?

In September and October, Australians band together as if motivated by a national war effort. It’s swooping season for the native magpie. This black-and-white bird with beady red-brown eyes can become aggressive, dive bombing and pecking anything, especially humans, that it deems a threat to its chicks.

During the spring swooping season, victims of attacks update online maps with nest locations in order to warn others of the danger from above. Principals put their bodies on the line to protect students. Talk radio shows are flooded with dramatic swoop stories.

“It is the biggest urban wildlife problem there is in Australia just because of the scale and sheer number of animals involved,” said Professor Darryl Jones, an urban ecologist with Griffith University in Brisbane. He has studied the troubled relationship between magpies and humans for 20 years.