![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/black-billed-magpie-3681-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-3681\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon\u00a0 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nI spent some more time with the nest building magpies yesterday and once again they were devilishly difficult to photograph well. My preference is to catch them taking off or in flight, especially this time of year because the greasewoods these birds prefer for nesting are particularly unattractive before they turn green.<\/p>\n
When this one landed in a fairly open spot on a greasewood I was determined to get flight shots when “he” eventually took off so typical of my usual strategy I framed him with extra room in the direction he was facing to give me room to catch him in flight without cutting off body parts with his wings open.<\/p>\n
Aggravating magpie habit #1:<\/p>\n
\n- Especially when other magpies are nearby this species tends to repeatedly perform what I call “fake takeoffs” where they quickly raise their tail, often calling at the same time as they crouch down (which is what this bird is doing though in this shot I didn’t catch him calling.) It nearly always fakes me out so I usually fire a quick burst of shots that are wasted. <\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Aggravating magpie habit #2:<\/em><\/p>\n\n- While anticipating takeoff I took 44 shots of him and in none of them was he facing to my left\u00a0 – he was always facing to my right (or occasionally facing me) so it was to my right that I left extra room in the frame. But dammit, I should have known that he’d very quickly turn to my left and take off in the “wrong” direction which they have a strong habit of doing.<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/black-billed-magpie-3685-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-3685-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nWith him taking off in the wrong direction the only reasons I was able to keep him completely in frame and still have room for acceptable composition was because I wasn’t very close to him and I’d had the foresight to remove my teleconverter.<\/p>\n
This and the following shot are both cropped to only 42.5% of the original image, 8.5 of 20 MP.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/black-billed-magpie-3686-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-3686-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nI like both flight shots because they’re sharp, the magpie is mostly clear of the greasewood, I have catchlights in his eye, the difficult blacks and whites are exposed well and I captured some nice iridescence.<\/p>\n
I look at photos like these as significant victories, in part because I came out on top of the notorious magpie trickster. That doesn’t happen every day or even every week.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
PS – At the last minute I decided to include another shot from yesterday morning of what may be the same magpie. The photo is only of documentary quality so it doesn’t deserve a standalone post but I still think it’s interesting enough to see the light of day. <\/em><\/p>\nIn this context I think of it as a “bonus image.”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/black-billed-magpie-3517-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-3517-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThe magpie had landed on top of the nest bush just out of frame at upper right when he took off to deliver nesting material to the nest buried in the middle of the bush. The nest entrance is out of frame at lower right which meant that he had to very quickly turn 180\u00b0 as he descended to the entrance.<\/p>\n
That tricky aerial maneuver resulted in an unusual flight posture that fascinates me with his body twisted like this and his beautiful tail feathers all a jumble. I think the nesting material in his bill makes his intention more obvious.<\/p>\n
I wish I had light in his eye but I still enjoy looking at the photo so I thought readers might also.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Black-billed Magpies just can’t be trusted and yesterday morning this bird proved it again. Twice.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82404,"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":[3,6,334,363,391],"tags":[31,57,146,574,231,610,4995,311],"class_list":["post-82402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-flight","tag-greasewood","tag-nesting-material","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-trickster","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/black-billed-magpie-3685-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lr4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82402","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=82402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}