Recently, my morning walk with the dogs interrupted something quite profound, dare i say, sacred; a magpie funeral. Walking towards a small meadow I heard three-note calls in unison from 10-12 magpies. Not an unusual note pairing in itself, but something in their voices was different, so I walked to the spot as the dogs flushed the birds from the ground. There, in the grass, wings out, a single stem of grass clenched in its beak, was a magpie elder—the extensive white in the wings feathers and long, resplendent tail indicative of its age and perhaps its profound meaning to the birds clustered around it.
Having seen funeral-like processions in other species, principally bison, its clear to me that animals have emotional lives and recognize the loss of their kin. This is an idea that continues to stick with me, and one I need to explore in clay—as much in a search for understanding as for a record of the encounter.