Larking about in the mud

We had very heavy rain overnight and as a consequence there is mud and a bit of a lake again out the back.  This bird gathering mud and vegetation for it's nest is a peewee or mudlark or magpie mudlark.  Google says it's also called a peewit or Murray magpie.  I imagine it gets called a peewit for the sound it makes.   You can see where it gets it's name from.

I remember reading as a child a dreamtime stories of either Peewees or Magpies and I was looking for it and came across this story:

This story is told by Paakantyi People up and down the Darling River. Thirri or Mudlark (pee-wee bird) and 2 Ngatji (Rainbow Serpents) lived in Paakantyi country up where the township of Bourke is now. The 2 Ngatji ruined the Thirri’s mud house, and the mudlark started to dig a channel trying to find suitable mud to build another house. The 2 Ngatji followed the mudlark and the water (nguku) flowed out of the Ngatji waterhole into the new channel. The Ngatji wriggled around forming the big bends, and they widened and deepened this channel, forming the Darling River.



This one is a male.  The male has a black throat and white eyebrows. The female has a white throat, and a white strip running up the side of the neck, stopping just short of the top of the head.