Zoe's very attached to me and
follows me everywhere that I go.
I've taken her up to the fire station a few times
because I know that she loves being with me, and
she's sat in the fire engine.
Hey, sweetheart.
Are you a good girl?
Have you been naughty?
She's just extremely intelligent, very inquisitive.
Whenever I call her name,
she'll fly out of nowhere and just land on me.
The head this time, eh?
The reason why she's so attached to me
is because I'm her dad,
and I've raised her from a little baby.
It's a full-time job.
I had to feed her every hour or two.
I called the vet, who came out to see me, and
we patched her wing up together.
Good girl!
So I thought I'd introduce these two.
Mowgli being the softie that he is,
he was quite excited, I think, to meet Zoe.
This is your first cuddle, guys.
Are you ready?
Eventually, when she was strong enough,
I'd run little distances
and get her to chase me.
Good girl!
And eventually, she got really strong,
and now she can fly it 100 percent.
Did you miss me?
Come on, you guys.
Come on.
The crazy thing is
Zoe is not the first magpie who I've rescued.
I was just driving down the road one day,
and I spotted a little ball of fluff on the side of the road.
The week that I found Swoop
is the week that I was told by my dad that
he was terminal with cancer.
So she came into my life at a time that I needed her.
I had never rescued an animal before.
It's always been my number one
priority to make sure that
Swoop was always wild.
She stuck around for about a year.
But ironically, after Dad sadly passed away,
I came back from his funeral,
and Swoop had made her own way into the wild.
It was definitely bittersweet, but she's a wild animal, and
I really wanted her to be healthy enough to go off
and hopefully meet a mate and have babies.
I accepted the fact that Swoop was gone.
I thought that it would all stop there, but
one day, I looked out the window,
and there was a Muscovy duck on the lawn.
A couple of days later, he brought his wife to meet me.
She laid eggs and had ducklings.
What do you think you're doing?
I had to co-parent 15 ducklings.
I've had people bring me birds, who I've tried to help.
I've got a feeling that when Swoop left,
she went around telling all the birds
that there was a guy down at the beach
who would help them.
Finding Swoop completely changed my life.
[Before she left], she would often go and visit people
and visit neighbors.
Next minute,
I'm getting a message from this girl
who I'd never met before saying,
“I became best friends
with Swoop over the summer holidays,
and I've painted her."
I said to her, “Well, hey,
how do you feel about writing a children's book together?"
Emma illustrated it,
I wrote it,
and it was published by Scholastic.
When my book got published,
I really wanted to be able to call my dad.
I'm sure that he's up there watching, and
I hope that he's proud of where I've come with
this journey that I'm on.
That just seems to be what my calling is, so
I'm very happy to do what I can to help them.