1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,\u00a0Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThis time of year paired magpies have already begun building nests or refurbishing older nests and four days ago on Antelope Island I found this one carrying nesting material to a nest that had been used in previous years. (S)he landed here close to the nest before taking off and plunging into the jumble of branches and twigs on the right that enclosed and protected the nest.<\/p>\n
On the island magpies seem to prefer to build their nests in greasewood, probably because there are few tall trees available and with the nest so close to the ground the spikey branches and twigs of greasewood provide extra protection from predators. Before the leaves come out greasewood is particularly unattractive for photography but if it serves the purpose of magpies that’s all that really matters.<\/p>\n
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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<\/p>\n
When the magpie began to take off for the nearby nest the nesting material in his bill almost disappeared against the similar background but if you look closely it’s there.<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, 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<\/p>\n
Push-off. Here the nesting material in his bill is more easily seen.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/black-billed-magpie-4546-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-4546-ron-dudley\\"")
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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<\/p>\n
In the next shot I caught him with his wings down and the light angle on his tail and wings revealed more of that delicious and elusive iridescence.<\/p>\n
I’m actually a little late documenting their nesting behavior this year. In this area Black-billed Magpies actually begin building nests on warm days in January and February but lately I haven’t been to the island often so I’ve missed the earlier stages. Research shows that nest construction takes them about 43 days so the window for documenting the behavior is a relatively long one.<\/p>\n
When the leaves come out the setting near the nests on the island will be much more attractive but by then the nests will be complete, incubation will have begun and the magpies will be much more difficult to photograph.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Magpies are usually my first nest building subjects in springtime and this year they didn’t disappoint.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70060,"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":[31,57,574,1307,610],"class_list":["post-70056","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-greasewood","tag-nest-building","tag-pica-hudsonia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/black-billed-magpie-4546-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-idW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70056","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=70056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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