{"id":28210,"date":"2014-11-30T16:49:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T23:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=28210"},"modified":"2014-11-30T16:49:35","modified_gmt":"2014-11-30T23:49:35","slug":"magpie-take-off-from-nest-sequence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/30\/magpie-take-off-from-nest-sequence\/","title":{"rendered":"Magpie Take-off From Nest Sequence"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was able to get five consecutive shots of this Black-billed Magpie as it took off from the top of its dome-shaped nest last spring on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The nest was buried in this bush but here you can see the top of the dome at lower center.\u00a0 I had removed my teleconverter and was ready for take-off.\u00a0 This is the first wing-beat and I think the open bill of the bird lends a little extra personality to the image.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was another one of those times when the speed of my shutter was synchronized with the flaps of the wings so the wings are in the\u00a0up position in all five of the shots.\u00a0 Here\u00a0there’s nice iridescence in the tail…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0but it was mostly lost when the angle of the tail changed ever so slightly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The magpie cleared the top of the bush…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0and then it was gone.\u00a0 Notice that in this image the magpie’s nictitating membrane is half closed (it slides over the eye from front to back).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

A much larger crop of the previous image reveals that there was just enough of the shiny cornea still uncovered by the nictitans\u00a0to give me a\u00a0catch light, but just barely.<\/p>\n

Much to the aggravation of bird photographers, the membrane\u00a0of many corvids is bright bluish-white (usually much brighter than it appears here)\u00a0so it stands out like a sore thumb and they close it more often than many other birds do.\u00a0 There’s actually good reason for that.\u00a0 Many corvids are largely black so\u00a0they don’t have\u00a0the showy colors that many other species use for communication.\u00a0 One way they make up for it is by\u00a0flashing their\u00a0very conspicuous nictitating membranes to other birds, to signal\u00a0aggression for example.<\/p>\n

Another fascinating little avian natural history tidbit but it sure\u00a0can make bird photography more challenging when shooting many corvids.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I was able to get five consecutive shots of this Black-billed Magpie as it took off from the top of its dome-shaped nest last spring on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28211,"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":[3,5,334,363],"tags":[31,57,566,1749,2341,146,186,228,1886,515,610,453,311],"class_list":["post-28210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-catch-light","tag-cornea","tag-corvids","tag-flight","tag-iridescence","tag-nest","tag-nictitans","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-teleconverter","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/black-billed-magpie-6527-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7l0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28210","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=28210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}