![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/black-billed-magpie-6315b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-6315b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nA long overdue victory of sorts for this bird photographer.<\/p>\n
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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Black-billed Magpies often reuse older nests rather than build new ones and I’ve been following some of their established nests for years. But six days ago I found a new nest that was still in the process of construction so I spent some time trying to capture magpies in flight with nesting material in their bills.<\/p>\n I was more pleased with this photo than you might think.<\/p>\n When I post photos of magpies in flight, especially when they’re carrying nesting material, it’s inevitable that they’ll be compared to my best known magpie photo – the one I used to have a large print of hanging over my fireplace. Some readers call it my “Magpie Hat photo” for reasons many will understand (that photo can be seen here<\/a><\/span><\/span>, 3rd photo down). That image is pretty close to one of a kind, in part because of all of the iridescence it reveals in the plumage. But I was at least as happy to get this photo as I was to get the Magpie Hat shot, even though there’s no iridescence showing. I’ll explain.<\/p>\n It has to do with degree of difficulty. The Magpie Hat photo was relatively easy to get because that bird had just taken off from one bush to go to its nest bush so I had locked focus on the magpie before it launched. Keeping focus locked on a bird in flight is MUCH easier than acquiring focus while its in flight, especially when the background is close to the bird.<\/p>\n But for this photo the magpie had been in flight for a long time before I got the shot so I had to acquire focus on it in flight. With magpie nesting photos, because the backgrounds are so close to the birds and they often fly so erratically, I’ve found that almost impossible to do. I’ve tried thousands of times to get magpie photos like this one and almost always failed.<\/p>\n So for me this photo is a long overdue victory of sorts but I’ll only take part of the credit. The rest of it goes to my new camera, the Canon R5, and its amazing autofocus system. That AF system has a downside or two but when it works it really<\/em> works!<\/p>\n Credit where credit’s due.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A long overdue victory of sorts for this bird photographer.<\/p>\n