{"id":29397,"date":"2015-02-06T07:33:45","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T14:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29397"},"modified":"2015-02-06T07:33:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T14:33:45","slug":"magpies-theyre-already-building-nests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/06\/magpies-theyre-already-building-nests\/","title":{"rendered":"Magpies – They’re Already Building Nests"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s crazy how early spring seems to be arriving around here.\u00a0 It was 55 degrees Fahrenheit when I got up this morning and temps like that are virtually\u00a0unheard of in early February in northern Utah.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

And yesterday morning some of the Antelope Island Black-billed\u00a0Magpies were already building nests.\u00a0 This is a shot I was lucky to get because I wasn’t even looking through my viewfinder when I took it.\u00a0 I saw the bird coming in with nesting material but didn’t know where it was going to land so I aimed down the barrel of my lens as I followed the bird and then at the last second used my back-button focus to hopefully lock onto the magpie and then pushed the shutter.\u00a0 This time it worked but it’s very rare that it does.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The magpie landed on the bush for a few moments…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0and then took off toward me and down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0I was happy to maintain focus on the bird as this happened.\u00a0 I probably owe that to the fast focusing and tracking abilities of the 7D Mark II.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This image taken an hour earlier was a heartbreaker.\u00a0 Magpies are notorious for flashing their nictitating membranes at inopportune moments for the photographer and it happened again.\u00a0 This is a\u00a0 small crop and I like the flight pose, light, exposure and detail in the blacks and it was all ruined by the membrane.<\/p>\n

I guess I’ll look at the bright side.\u00a0 I got a catch light in the eye, even with the membrane closed.<\/p>\n

Yes, I know I’m reaching for that one…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

It’s crazy how early spring seems to be arriving around here.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29399,"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],"tags":[31,57,2348,566,146,1307,1886,515,610,311],"class_list":["post-29397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-canon-7d-mark-ii","tag-catch-light","tag-flight","tag-nest-building","tag-nictitans","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/black-billed-magpie-1384-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7E9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29397","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=29397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}