This is the moment a brave magpie defends its nest and refuses to back down against a murderous fox which has just killed a chicken.
The footage was shot in Wondelgem near Ghent, Belgium, where Klaas Vandromme and his family woke up to find a real-life nature documentary happening before their very eyes as the magpie took on the fox on their garden wall.
Vandromme told local media: “The fox had already bitten one of the neighbours’ chickens and killed it.
“This was not easy as the henhouse has a hatch that keeps foxes out at night. That hatch only opens when it is daylight, and the fox must have been waiting for that.
“He then dragged the chicken into our garden.”
The fox is then seen trying to scale the garden wall, but can only do so after putting down the chicken and when it reached the top, it was then attacked by the nervous magpie parent.
Vandromme added: “That bird tried to chase away the fox and eventually succeeded.
“The fox wanted to climb over our wall with the dead chicken, but when that didn’t work, the animal want to try another route.”
Nick De Meulemeester of the Merelbeke Centre for Birds and Wildlife told local media that foxes are not common around urban areas of Ghent but “they are there.”
He added: “And we should be happy about that. They eat nuisance animals like city pigeons, rats and mice. It makes sense that we rarely see them. They roam the city mainly at night and don’t like to be seen by people.”
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Story By: Delano Langras, Sub-Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency: Central European News
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