{"id":45916,"date":"2017-02-15T05:02:57","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T12:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=45916"},"modified":"2017-02-15T05:02:57","modified_gmt":"2017-02-15T12:02:57","slug":"magpie-rising-in-iridescent-splendor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/15\/magpie-rising-in-iridescent-splendor\/","title":{"rendered":"Magpie Rising In Iridescent Splendor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iridescence in Black-billed Magpies is fleeting but quite spectacular when you can\u00a0catch the light just right.<\/p>\n

Some of the magpies on Antelope Island have already begun early nesting activities. They’re hanging around nests used in previous years and beginning to refurbish some of them by adding new twigs. Mud to line the interior of the\u00a0nests will come later (it was all frozen yesterday morning). These activities\u00a0will slowly increase over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I photographed this one yesterday morning as it took off from the top of one of the domed nests on the island. I was happy to get large amounts if iridescence in both the left wing and the tail and the position of the right wing was just about perfect to avoid blocking our view of either one. Good light on those photon-trapping deep blacks of the head and upper\u00a0torso even gave me some detail there and\u00a0excellent\u00a0eye contact and a catch light topped it all off.<\/p>\n

This time of year there’s no greenery on the bushes containing the nests so these settings\u00a0are never very attractive.\u00a0Large amounts of color in the magpie, on those relatively rare occasions when\u00a0I can capture it,\u00a0helps to compensate for that deficiency.<\/p>\n

In my area magpie\u00a0nest-building is one of the first tangible harbingers of spring and it really perked me up to finally see it. It’s been a very long winter and I’m\u00a0damned tired\u00a0of it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – On previous occasions when I’ve posted magpie images with large amounts of iridescence I’ve been asked if I played around with colors or saturation during processing\u00a0to get it. The answer is no, I don’t do that. All I’ve done with this\u00a0photo is crop, adjust exposure slightly\u00a0and sharpen.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Iridescence in Black-billed Magpies is fleeting but quite spectacular when you can catch the light just right.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45921,"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":[3,334,363,391],"tags":[31,57,186,228,1307,610],"class_list":["post-45916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-iridescence","tag-nest","tag-nest-building","tag-pica-hudsonia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/black-billed-magpie-1915c-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-bWA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45916","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=45916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}