{"id":25705,"date":"2014-08-08T05:30:27","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T11:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25705"},"modified":"2014-08-08T16:37:32","modified_gmt":"2014-08-08T22:37:32","slug":"iridescence-and-the-role-of-plumage-variations-in-juvenile-magpies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/08\/iridescence-and-the-role-of-plumage-variations-in-juvenile-magpies\/","title":{"rendered":"Iridescence And The Role of Plumage Variations In Juvenile Magpies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juvenile Black-billed Magpies have significantly less iridescence in their plumage than the adults so the amount that appeared in this young bird surprised me.<\/p>\n

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\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The juvenile was perched near the group campground on Antelope Island a week ago\u00a0and it let me get unusually close so I switched to my zoom lens.\u00a0 Even at that distance it was comfortable enough to give me a wing stretch and when it did the sun angle was just right for some iridescence to appear, even in a juvie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And when it turned to take off away from me even more iridescence appeared, more than I recall ever seeing in a juvenile previously.<\/p>\n

Magpies at this stage\u00a0show considerably more variations in plumage\u00a0than do\u00a0the adults\u00a0(size\u00a0and shape of white wing patches and the length of dark tips on flight feathers\u00a0for example).\u00a0 It’s now that they’re forming a variety of complex bonds and\u00a0it’s thought that those variations\u00a0allow them to recognize individuals so that those bonds can be formed.<\/p>\n

Social status and dominance are also being established at this\u00a0stage and that also requires individual recognition.\u00a0 Some young\u00a0males even pull the tails of predatory birds like Cooper’s Hawks and\u00a0Northern Goshawks\u00a0in\u00a0a daring act of bravado\u00a0that\u00a0is thought to increase social status.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine?\u00a0 A goshawk!\u00a0 Reminds me of\u00a0a magpie version of “the running of the bulls” in Pamplona, Spain…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Addendum:\u00a0 I’m\u00a0posting this heavily cropped version of the first image to better show eye color in response to the question below from Louise Shimmel.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juvenile Black-billed Magpies have significantly less iridescence in their plumage than the adults so the amount that appeared in this young bird surprised me.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25707,"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":[3,334,363,395],"tags":[31,57,112,2151,186,190,610,2152],"class_list":["post-25705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-miscellaneous","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-dominance","tag-individual-recognition","tag-iridescence","tag-juvenile","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-social-status"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/black-billed-magpie-3159-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6GB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25705","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=25705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}