Composed at the request of Don McKenzie for the Otago University Adult Education choir at Hyde, Central Otago, Lilburn's 'The Magpies' reveals the composer's precise ear for the sights and sounds of the natural world. The choir at Hyde apparently included three male voices and twelve female voices and Lilburn recalled in a letter to Lisa Futschek, written on 28 November 1990, 'I imagined something very simple, in ballad style, for amateur country choirs. Given this, I added no dynamic markings, though I'd now imagine the men's voices (singing the verses) objectively mezzo (i.e. not overdramatizing the text), and the women's voices of the magpie chorus gradually increasing their intensity, though not dramatically.'