![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/black-billed-magpie-7797-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-7797-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nAnd some thoughts on roadkill, of all things.<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, 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 Since I’m not finding many Black-billed Magpies on Antelope Island these days, it’s nice to find them elsewhere.<\/p>\n Three days ago, in a remote area of northern Utah, this immature magpie and several of ‘his’ buddies were feeding on roadkill (a rabbit I think) when I drove over a small hill and surprised them. Many of them flew off quite a distance but this one didn’t go far and landed on a fence post on the ‘good’ side of the road.<\/p>\n When he took off I caught him in a flight posture I like and he was still close enough to the post for me to keep it in frame, which I also like for the context it provides.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Speaking of roadkill, later that morning I provided some of my own. Not long after I left the Short-eared Owls I posted photos of yesterday, I ran over some critter trying to cross the road that I believe was a half-grown Ring-necked Pheasant. I wasn’t driving fast (after all, I was looking for birds), but I didn’t see it until the very last second so I had absolutely no chance to avoid it. But I felt the thump when I hit it.<\/p>\n Three days later it still bothers me. I’m one to make every practical and safe effort to avoid hitting critters on the road, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, and until that morning it had been a long time since it had happened. At least that I’m aware of.<\/p>\n At this point all I can hope for is that it provided more food for the magpies and other scavengers. And that none of them became roadkill themselves.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n More thoughts on roadkill:<\/em><\/p>\n When I was a teenager on the northwest Montana farm there would sometimes be so many ‘gophers’ (Richardson’s Ground Squirrels) on the road in early spring they were impossible to avoid. Their tendency to feed on their road-killed companions only compounded the massacre, as did the fact that springtime was when many farmers hauled their grain to town in big trucks. There were times when parts of the road to town (Cut Bank) would become almost greasy with road-killed gophers. <\/em><\/p>\n Eventually you couldn’t help becoming almost immune to hitting them. Trying to avoid them could be dangerous and besides, gophers could be a terrible scourge on spring grain crops so it was easy to think of running over gophers as a form of rodent control, especially for farmers.<\/em><\/p>\n