{"id":28051,"date":"2014-11-22T06:36:57","date_gmt":"2014-11-22T13:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28051"},"modified":"2014-11-22T09:29:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T16:29:12","slug":"black-billed-magpie-with-an-apparent-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/22\/black-billed-magpie-with-an-apparent-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-billed Magpie With An Apparent Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black-billed Magpies feed primarily on carrion, ground-dwelling arthropods and seeds.\u00a0 But yesterday morning I photographed a magpie with an apparent kill, a vole.\u00a0 I’m not particularly\u00a0proud of the images (several of them\u00a0could be sharper) but was happy to document the behavior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark 2, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I noticed that this bird had something in its beak as I approached it\u00a0along the road adjacent to Glover Pond in Farmington.\u00a0 It wasn’t until I got my\u00a0lens on the bird (through a bunch of foreground vegetation)\u00a0that it became obvious that it was a vole.\u00a0 After a couple of shots…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark 2, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

the magpie flew off to another perch and set the vole on top for a few moments.\u00a0 I like the vole’s little paw sticking up\u00a0in an apparent surrender that’s obviously too late.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark 2, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

It then reached down to grab the vole…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark 2, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

and flew off with it once again.<\/p>\n

Magpies are occasionally known to kill prey (especially small birds in the nest)\u00a0though in my experience it’s a relatively rare occurrence.\u00a0 It’s more common for them to steal food from predators (kleptoparasitism)\u00a0which makes me wonder if this bird might have pilfered the vole from a kestrel.\u00a0 It’s even possible that the vole had been cached by another predator and the magpie encountered it serendipitously\u00a0(the vole appeared stiff and could even have been frozen).\u00a0 It’s interesting to speculate but I’ll never know for\u00a0sure.<\/p>\n

If any of my readers have had experience with magpies as predators I’d be very interested in hearing about it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Black-billed Magpies feed primarily on carrion, ground-dwelling arthropods and seeds. But yesterday morning I photographed a magpie with an apparent kill, a vole. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28052,"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":[57,1430,610,724,256,315],"class_list":["post-28051","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-kleptoparasitism","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-predator","tag-prey","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/black-billed-magpie-2147-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7ir","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28051","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=28051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}