![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/black-billed-magpie-5308-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-5308-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nIn my area Black-billed Magpies are among our earliest nesters.<\/p>\n
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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Yesterday morning I spent almost two hours trying to photograph a pair of\u00a0magpies as they were constructing their nest but shooting conditions were very difficult so my results were marginal. The nest and birds were further away than I\u00a0prefer and I was shooting through a mass of last year’s dried sunflower stems that only gave me a narrow path of unobstructed view. More often than not I had sunflowers in the way but given the challenges\u00a0I do think I got a few interesting photos and I wanted to document their early spring\u00a0nest-building behavior.<\/p>\n I got very few flight shots of them carrying nesting material to the nest and almost none of them had any eye contact. The actual nest is buried in the bush just out of view at bottom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n My best chances of catching them in flight\u00a0came when they would take off after a twig delivery. Sometimes they’d launch from the top of the nest bush which put a narrow band of blue in the background from an arm of the Great Salt Lake.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n But other times they’d take off from the center of the bush which made for very busy and quite bright\u00a0backgrounds. Thankfully the black and white birds still stand out quite well\u00a0with\u00a0backgrounds like that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n With this background I was surprised I like this shot as much as I do. I think that vertically raised tail with its flashy iridescence in contrast to the rest of the body makes all the difference for me. Though it might look like the magpie is about to take off it really isn’t. With the tail down it kept getting caught up in the mass of twigs behind the bird so the magpie raised it vertically to avoid the apparent discomfort of it all. As it did so it briefly began to lose its balance, thus the partially extended wings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/black-billed-magpie-5402b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-5402b-ron-dudley\\"")
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