{"id":163816,"date":"2024-09-03T06:14:46","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T12:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=163816"},"modified":"2024-09-03T08:57:43","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T14:57:43","slug":"what-i-thought-was-some-unusual-magpie-behavior-turned-out-to-be-something-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/03\/what-i-thought-was-some-unusual-magpie-behavior-turned-out-to-be-something-else\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Thought Was Some Unusual Magpie Behavior Turned Out To Be Something Else"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something more sinister. Probably.<\/p>\n

Last week while looking for birds on Antelope Island I decided to visit the Frary Peak trailhead to see what I might find near the very large gravel parking lot on the side of the mountain. This time of year I often find Chukars on or near the parking lot and\/or Sage Thrashers along the very steep road leading up to the parking lot. And Western Meadowlarks and Loggerhead Shrikes are always a possibility almost anywhere on the island, including in that area.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 400, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

I struck out on all those species but I did find this molting Black-billed Magpie exhibiting what I initially thought was a very curious behavior.<\/p>\n

‘He’ appeared to be searching for and picking up little dark brown rocks amongst all the other similar-sized but lighter-colored rocks on the parking lot. He did a lot of walking as he searched for the prized rocks and when he’d picked up all of them that he could carry he…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 400, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

flew a short distance up the side of the mountain, stashed the rocks in the grasses where I couldn’t see him, and then flew back down to the parking lot to gather more rocks. He did that four different times while I was with him.<\/p>\n

It took me a while to figure out what was really going on. The “rocks” he was gathering weren’t really rocks.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 400, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

They were dog food kibbles. After the magpie was gone I cruised around looking for those little piles of dog food and found four piles of them spread out on the large parking lot. I strongly suspect there were more.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 400, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

He was really stuffing his mouth with those kibbles before he carried them up the side of the mountain. Here we can see three of them. There may have been more. I believe he was caching the kibbles on the mountainside, rather than eating them immediately.<\/p>\n

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I’m pretty sure that the little piles of dog food were the result of photographers baiting coyotes to the fairly remote parking lot, where they could be photographed up close and unobstructed by vegetation or topography. Leashed dogs are allowed on Antelope Island trails but because of all those little piles of the same kind of dog food spread out on the large parking lot, I strongly doubt they were intended for some hiker’s dog. It doesn’t make sense.<\/p>\n

Sadly, photographers baiting coyotes with dog food on Antelope Island is nothing new.<\/p>\n

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Years ago, on the paved road north of Garr Ranch on Antelope Island, I found the road strewn with dog food and this coyote eating it. It was an obvious attempt at baiting coyotes. And it worked.<\/p>\n

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On that morning when I got back to the north end of the island, I reported the baiting to one of the rangers and showed him some of my photos of the coyote and some of the dog food I’d collected from the road. He didn’t seem particularly surprised but he wasn’t happy about it. He said he’d be more vigilant in keeping an eye out for baiting on the island.<\/p>\n

Baiting\/feeding wildlife on the island is both unethical and illegal. But some photographers don’t give a damn about little subtleties like that.<\/p>\n

I call them slob photographers. Or worse.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Something more sinister. Probably. (6 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163817,"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":[3,5,6,334,363,374,8,16],"tags":[31,7603,1063,7604,7602,311],"class_list":["post-163816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-oddities","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-coyotes","category-ecology-and-environment","category-photography-ethics","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-baiting-coyotes","tag-dog-food","tag-slob-wildlife-photographers","tag-strange-black-billed-magpie-behavior","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/black-billed-magpie-6511-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-GCc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163816","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=163816"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163865,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163816\/revisions\/163865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}