{"id":109502,"date":"2022-04-03T05:16:47","date_gmt":"2022-04-03T11:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=109502"},"modified":"2022-04-03T10:03:35","modified_gmt":"2022-04-03T16:03:35","slug":"black-billed-magpie-flashing-dominance-with-its-nictitating-membranes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/03\/black-billed-magpie-flashing-dominance-with-its-nictitating-membranes\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-billed Magpie Flashing Dominance With Its Nictitating Membranes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Including my attempt at another documentary video clip.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Five days ago on Antelope Island this Black-billed Magpie allowed me an unusually close approach. The light wasn’t very good so I had a hard time getting any detail in the blacks but ‘he’ seemed kind of excited about something so I kept him in my viewfinder just in case something interesting happened.<\/p>\n

One of the first things I noticed was that some of the feathers on his right wing seemed to be in disarray for some unknown reason. But soon I became more interested in one of his behaviors – he was constantly flashing his nictitating membranes.<\/p>\n

I’ll get back to this guy in a minute but first, more about nictitating membranes.<\/p>\n

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Most of my readers already know that birds have a third eyelid, the nictitating membrane or nictitans, that helps to keep the eye moist and clean and guards it from wind and dust but it also functions to protect the eye from injury. This older photo shows a magpie with its nictitans closed to protect its eye while it’s attempting to manhandle (birdhandle?) a cumbersome twig into its nest.<\/p>\n

But a few birds apparently use their membranes as a means of communication. The nictitans in most species is translucent, with little to no color, but in a few birds like dippers and magpies the membrane is almost shockingly white and very easy to see (here it has a bluish cast). As far as I can tell there’s no conclusive evidence (so far) that dippers use their membranes to actually communicate but we’ve known for some time that magpies use their membranes to interact and communicate with other magpies.<\/p>\n

Magpies flash their membranes at other magpies to establish dominance. Often, though not always, only the membrane on the side facing the opponent is flashed.<\/p>\n

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OK, back to the magpie in the first photo. While I had him in my viewfinder I noticed that he was almost constantly flashing his membranes so I switched over to video rather than still photos for a brief period to see if I could document the behavior. There were two other magpies in the same general area so I presume he was flashing at one or both of them.<\/p>\n

I’m still a rank amateur at video but here’s a link<\/a><\/span><\/span> to the 41 second clip. It’s one thing to see the membrane closed in still photos but I think it’s even more interesting to see the behavior repeated again and again in video. As a bonus you’ll be serenaded intermittently by meadowlarks as you watch the clip. I hope you do.<\/p>\n

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Oh, and guess what?<\/p>\n

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When the magpie took off the reason for his wing feathers being in disarray was revealed. Apparently he’s molting asymmetrically.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Including my attempt at another documentary video clip.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,6,334,363,395],"tags":[2054,31,6286,57,6214,6285,1886,6283,610,311,6284],"class_list":["post-109502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-miscellaneous","tag-american-dipper","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-asymmetrical-molting","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-canon-r5","tag-communicating-with-nictitating-membranes","tag-nictitans","tag-nictitating-membrane-functions","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-utah-2","tag-video-of-flashing-nictitating-membranes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/black-billed-magpie-5694-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sua","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109502"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109541,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109502\/revisions\/109541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}