{"id":126138,"date":"2022-12-21T05:50:13","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T12:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=126138"},"modified":"2022-12-21T06:19:42","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T13:19:42","slug":"magpies-bickering-over-a-dead-rabbit-on-a-bitterly-cold-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/21\/magpies-bickering-over-a-dead-rabbit-on-a-bitterly-cold-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"Magpies Bickering Over A Dead Rabbit On A Bitterly Cold Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my recent post of two pretty spectacular sunrise photos<\/a><\/span><\/span> I complained about the very poor light I had for the rest of that morning, which resulted in flat light and photos I wasn’t particularly happy with. But I did get a few that documented some interesting Black-billed Magpie behavior.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 2000, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In the bitter morning cold (12\u00b0 F.) I found four magpies feeding on the dead rabbit at lower left. All four of them were pretty contentious about it but the magpie on the right seemed to be the largest and most dominant in the group, to the point of being a bit of a bully.<\/p>\n

‘He’ spent much of his time chasing off his companions. Here he’s returning to the rabbit after chasing one magpie away, only to find another one on his frozen breakfast. The smaller and less dominant magpie made only a feeble attempt at defending the rabbit before conceding defeat and flying off.<\/p>\n

But the bully wasn’t content with just trying to keep the rabbit to himself. After apparently gorging himself on as much rabbit as he could eat he…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 2000, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

proceeded to chase off any of his companions that landed anywhere near the rabbit.<\/p>\n

Sometimes he seemed to be doing it just for fun. Here he’s displacing one of his companions that dared to land on a sagebrush that was at least 25′ away from the rabbit. He performed similar stunts again and again with all three of the other magpies.<\/p>\n

Food is at a premium when it’s that cold but I had to wonder if the dominant magpie wasn’t using more energy chasing off his companions than he was gaining by eating more of the rabbit than they were.<\/p>\n

Happy Winter Solstice.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

There seems to be a bully in every crowd. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126139,"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":[334,363,392,394],"tags":[57,6671,6672,610,459,311],"class_list":["post-126138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-bully","tag-fighting-over-food","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-rabbit","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/black-billed-magpie-4044-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-wOu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126138","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=126138"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126173,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126138\/revisions\/126173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}