{"id":46794,"date":"2017-03-19T05:57:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-19T11:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=46794"},"modified":"2017-03-19T06:18:08","modified_gmt":"2017-03-19T12:18:08","slug":"black-billed-magpies-at-their-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/19\/black-billed-magpies-at-their-nest\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-billed Magpies At Their Nest"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can never go\u00a0to too long without posting a few magpie photos.<\/p>\n

There’s no middle ground with magpies – most\u00a0folks seem to either love them or loathe them. They’re noisy, mischievous, smart, arrogant and cheeky. They sometimes steal songbird eggs which vilifies them with many bird lovers, they’re notorious for stealing dog food off of back\u00a0porches and patios,\u00a0suburban birds\u00a0often begin their raucous\u00a0cacophony at dawn which shortens many a good nights sleep and they endlessly torment pet dogs and cats. The list of reasons to\u00a0dislike them seems endless with some folks.<\/p>\n

But I couldn’t disagree more. I’ve spent\u00a0countless hours watching and photographing them\u00a0on Antelope Island and in my own back yard and\u00a0they always seem to display behaviors that I find fascinating. And because of their deep blacks and bright whites they’re truly a challenge to photograph well. How could\u00a0I not love’m?<\/p>\n

So I had to present a couple of\u00a0photos of them\u00a0this morning to get my magpie fix.\u00a0Each of these shots was\u00a0taken within the last week on Antelope island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

These birds are still working on refurbishing an old magpie nest so they present me with\u00a0many\u00a0opportunities as they come and go with nesting material. They’ve mostly completed the dome of the nest so they aren’t hauling big sticks anymore – instead they’re bringing in mostly very small twigs and dried grass to line the interior nest cup. This bird is leaving the nest after just such a delivery.<\/p>\n

The light on the face of this bird seems just a little odd to me, making it appear\u00a0as if it has a deeper black mask between its eye and bill. It doesn’t.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I caught the light on this bird just right to get significant iridescence on the wing and tail. The upper part of the domed nest can be seen at lower right.<\/p>\n

The settings for these shots aren’t particularly attractive because there’s not much green spring growth yet\u00a0so the colors are those of dead vegetation from last year. But by the time things green up these birds will be on eggs inside the domed nest\u00a0and there’ll be significantly fewer opportunities to photograph them.<\/p>\n

So I take what I can, when I can.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

There’s no middle ground with magpies – most folks seem to either love them or loathe them.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46795,"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":true,"_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":[31,57,228,610],"class_list":["post-46794","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-nest","tag-pica-hudsonia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/black-billed-magpie-6873-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-caK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46794","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=46794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}