{"id":164484,"date":"2024-09-29T05:17:36","date_gmt":"2024-09-29T11:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=164484"},"modified":"2024-09-29T05:17:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T11:17:36","slug":"a-magpie-acting-strangely-and-me-missing-the-obvious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/29\/a-magpie-acting-strangely-and-me-missing-the-obvious\/","title":{"rendered":"A Magpie Acting Strangely And Me Missing The Obvious"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pretty soon I shouldn’t be missing stuff like that.<\/p>\n

A week ago today in the west desert I was mostly frustrated as I tried to get takeoff and flight shots of a Black-billed Magpie that spent several minutes flying back and forth between several small trees in a clump. Each time ‘he’ landed in one of the trees he seemed to be attempting to catch prey within the tree he’d landed on. He repeatedly poked his head deep within the tree’s leaves, as if he was trying to catch something. I thought he was chasing insects.<\/p>\n

He always had his back to me as he was doing it so I’m not including any of those photos.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until I arrived home and looked at the photos sequentially on my big screen that I realized what he’d been doing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

As I looked at the photos in order, this is the first shot I saw that provided a hint about what he’d been after. He’d been picking and eating berries from the trees. In this photo he has a berry in the tip of his bill. That berry can barely be seen beneath the bottom edge of his left wing.<\/p>\n

It isn’t what I expected. I don’t recall seeing magpies eating berries before.<\/p>\n

Here he’s about to land on the clump of leaves at lower left.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

I kept him in frame as he landed, but just barely. I have no more room on the left.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, 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

Keep in mind, while I was looking through my lens I never noticed the berries – in the trees or in his bill. So I never knew when he was swallowing them and didn’t get any photos as he was doing so.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

After he swallowed it he flew back to…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/6400, 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

the tree where he found the first berry and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

found another one and swallowed it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

Then he poked around and found a third berry, which he also swallowed. After that he’d apparently had his fill because he took off and left the area. With me still wondering what he’d been doing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I know exactly why I never noticed the berries while I was looking through my viewfinder. I have a severe cataract in my right eye, my shooting eye, so even though I have the vision-correcting diopter on my camera cranked in one direction as far as it’ll go, everything is still a fuzzy, blurry, cloudy mess. And in recent months it’s been getting worse.<\/p>\n

I’ve complained about that cataract for a very long time so I thought readers would be interested in knowing that I’m now scheduled to have cataract surgery on that eye on November 18th. And it could happen sooner. I’m on a cancellation list and I was told that there’s a “good chance” that they’ll call me to fill someone else’s cancelled surgery appointment. If they do, I’ll take that appointment.<\/p>\n

It’s way past time to sh*t or get off the pot.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Pretty soon I shouldn’t be missing stuff like that.\u00a0 (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164488,"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],"tags":[57,7638,5647,4087,146,610,2738,311,533],"class_list":["post-164484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-camera-diopter","tag-cataract-surgery","tag-eating-berries","tag-flight","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/black-billed-magpie-8850-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-GMY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164484","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=164484"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164521,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164484\/revisions\/164521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}