{"id":57427,"date":"2018-03-19T05:35:06","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T11:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=57427"},"modified":"2018-03-19T05:49:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-19T11:49:41","slug":"magpies-working-on-their-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/19\/magpies-working-on-their-nest\/","title":{"rendered":"Magpies Working On Their Nest"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week ago today Black-billed Magpies were diligent about their nest-building.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, 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

I arrived on scene right after sunrise so\u00a0the light was very warm at first and that has\u00a0a slightly\u00a0funky reddish\u00a0effect on some of\u00a0the blacks. This bird was taking a break before resuming its nest-building duties but…<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, 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

I did catch it at takeoff.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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

Once the sun was a little higher in the sky the light was less warm but that makes the dried grasses in the background fairly bright and I don’t think that background is flattering for these black and white birds. I’m really looking forward to the grasses and bushes greening up and providing some color back\u00a0there. I’m not fond of the background in any of these images but this is a documentary post about nest-building so I’m just going to try to look past it.<\/p>\n

Most of the time the nesting material they brought in was twigs and sticks, from small to fairly large. Then they would try to “weave” them into the previous construction of the nest but that was awkward and difficult to do and watching them attempt it can be pretty amusing.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, 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 the nesting material of choice was mud or a mud and grass mixture that they use to line the interior chamber of their domed nest. Occasionally they use bison fur to line the nest cup. On this morning I watched as one of the magpies picked shedding fur off of a bison’s back which I tried to document with a few photographs but I couldn’t quite get an angle on the bison with my long lens through my pickup window.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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 usually it was a twig or stick and sometimes it was quite bulky and much longer than this one. I love that spread tail as this bird landed.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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

I don’t think the iridescence (when I can get it) is set off as nicely by these background colors but I’m still happy to get it. This bird is about to land on top of the domed nest just out of frame to the right.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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

I wish I liked some of the photos of them trying to weave the sticks into the nest but usually their face is largely hidden and we can’t see the eye.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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

This bird has an almost impossible goal. It’s apparent intention was to take this long unwieldy stick near or into the nest entrance (which we can’t see at this angle) but the thick\u00a0tangle of twigs very near the nest present an almost insurmountable obstacle. It wrestled\u00a0with this stick for some time in an attempt to get it free of all the obstacles before it…<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, 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

launched\u00a0the very short distance to its destination. In this tangle of twigs that are potential threats to their eyes\u00a0their nictitating membranes are often closed for protection. In this species the membrane is\u00a0an\u00a0opaque bluish-white that is very easily seen because magpies flash their membranes to other magpies as a form of communication.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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

This is the last shot I got before the bird’s head disappeared in the tangle of the nest.\u00a0We can see why their feathers often become ratty-looking during the nest-building process.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, 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

These birds would often land on this smaller bush right in front of the nest and use it as a launching pad for their final approach to the nest\u00a0directly in front of them. I’m sure they deliberately use that perch as the spot from which they make their plan about precisely where that particular piece of nesting material will be placed. Here it’s just a small twig.<\/p>\n

I love watching and photographing these nest-building behaviors while they last but once the eggs are laid and incubation begins I’ll have far\u00a0fewer opportunities with them so I have to enjoy it while I can.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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A week ago today Black-billed Magpies were diligent about their nest-building.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57432,"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":[31,704,57,146,186,228,1307,231,515,610,2738,311],"class_list":["post-57427","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-bison-fur","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-flight","tag-iridescence","tag-nest","tag-nest-building","tag-nesting-material","tag-nictitating-membrane","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/black-billed-magpie-5887-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eWf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57427","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=57427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}