Young Western Magpies learn ‘sentences’ like human toddlers

New research shows fledgling magpies combine sounds into structured call sequences through social learning—the first evidence of learned syntax outside humans.

Read the full version of this article in the Autumn 2026 issue of Australian Birdlife magazine. To get your copy, become a member now.

A new study suggests that when young magpies in Western Australia begin calling from the treetops, they may be doing something surprisingly similar to a human toddler forming their first sentences. 

We’ve long known magpies are clever. They recognise faces, remember friendly people and, in one remarkable case, even cooperated to remove tracking harnesses from one another. Now research from The University of Western Australia shows that their vocal development may also echo the way children learn language. 

In a study soon to be published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr Stephanie Mason and colleagues followed 11 fledgling magpies for 200 days after they left the nest. By recording their calls week after week, the team captured something never before documented in a non-human animal: the developmental emergence of learned call sequences built across multiple levels. 

“We did some research a few years ago… and basically discovered for the first time call combining at multiple levels,” Dr Mason explains. “In human language, we combine sounds into words and then those words into sentences. And that’s really crucial for the level of complexity that language is capable of.” 

In most other animals, evidence of combination has stopped at one layer—either sounds forming calls, or calls forming sequences. “There’s not that kind of lower level of combining distinct sounds,” Dr Mason says. Magpies, it turns out, appear to do both. 

The researchers identified four basic sound elements (with nicknames like ‘noisy line’ and ‘down sweep,’ based on their shapes on a spectrogram). These sounds are combined into multi-element calls, which are then assembled into longer sequences. It’s that layered structure—sounds into calls, calls into sequences—that makes the comparison with syntax possible. 

Dr Stephanie Mason with an eager study subject. Photo by UWA

But how do the young birds acquire it? 

“What wasn’t really known was how that actually developed from early on in the magpie’s life,” Dr Mason says. 

All fledglings began with a simple call. “The noisy line call is the first thing that they all produce reliably,” she says. “Every single fledgling produces that call first.” As they grew, they introduced new sounds and began combining them in increasingly complex ways. 

There was even a stage resembling human babbling. “That’s what we think is their kind of vocal playground,” Dr Mason explains, “in the same way that babies kind of gurgle.” 

Importantly, the fledglings weren’t learning alone. “We found that they are indeed learning them from their social groups, which is really exciting because that’s essentially what human toddlers do as well,” Dr Mason says. The more socially connected a young magpie was, the more sophisticated its vocal repertoire became. 

So what are they saying? Mostly, it seems, messages about predators and territorial intruders—though exactly how meaning maps onto different sequences is still being investigated. 

Dr Mason is careful to note that magpie communication is “a long way off from being anywhere near as complex as human language,” but by showing that structured, socially learned sequencing emerges during development, the study places magpies at the forefront of research into the origins of syntax. 

“They’re really charismatic, lovely birds when you get to know them,” Dr Mason says. “They’re certainly very clever.” 

For a species best known for its spring swoops, that’s an impressive new claim to fame.