![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/black-billed-magpie-1580-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-1580-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nSome of the ‘tamest’ magpies I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n
Four days ago on a remote road in northern Utah I found a group of mostly immature Black-billed Magpies that had been feeding on roadkill. I slowed my pickup down to a crawl as I passed so I could identify the roadkill which turned out to be a rabbit.<\/p>\n
I’m about to tell you more than you want to know.<\/p>\n
At that moment I felt ‘nature calling’ and since I was nearly stopped anyway I got out of my pickup to uh… water the horse. Two big cups of coffee and then milk to wash down my chocolate donut will do that. As I exited my pickup the dead rabbit was about 8′ from me, just below and to the driver’s side of my rear bumper. I hadn’t even closed my door when one of the magpies came from out of nowhere, landed on the rabbit and began to feed as it seemed to completely ignore me even though I was so close I felt I could almost reach out and touch it. That poor bird must have been starving because around here magpies are typically very difficult to get close to.<\/p>\n
So you know me, I backed my pickup up to get further away and a better light angle on the rabbit and waited with my lens at the ready for the magpies to begin feeding again. I’ll spare you most of my somewhat grisly photos that include the dead rabbit but I think some of my flight shots are worth seeing.<\/p>\n
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1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 330 mm. not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Three different magpies flew in mostly at different times to feed on the rabbit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/5, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 158 mm. not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Even after moving further away I was still too close to use my big lens for flight shots so all of these photos were taken with my smaller zoom lens, what I call my ‘baby lens’.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/5, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 248 mm. not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n I think this one could have been a pretty darn good shot if I had any detail in the shadows on the left wing behind the head. In fact I like it quite a lot despite that deficiency.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/5, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 220 mm. not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Typically the magpies were landing on nearby blooming rabbitbrush before they flew down to the rabbit. This is one of the few shots I got that showed significant iridescence since most of the magpies were immature and birds of that age show much less iridescence than adults.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 330 mm. not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n The blooming rabbitbrush provided some color in many of my backgrounds. This time of year it’s mostly pretty dry and brown around here.<\/p>\n The last photo below includes the rabbit. Scroll no further if you don’t have the stomach for it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 340 mm. not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n That magpie bill was surprisingly efficient at tearing meat off of the rabbit. It seemed to come off easily – maybe the rabbit was more ‘ripe’ than I thought it was, even though there was no noticeable rotten meat smell.<\/p>\n That first magpie when I exited my pickup was the closest I’ve ever been to a magpie. Magpies (and ravens) have been shot as vermin for so many generations they’ve learned as a species to be very wary of humans, especially in remote areas like this. But they haven’t always been that way. When Lewis and Clark first encountered magpies in 1804 in South Dakota these birds were bold, to the point of entering their tents to steal meat and taking food from their hands.<\/p>\n Perhaps these magpies were reverting to their ancestral ways but I think it’s more likely that they were just very, very hungry.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some of the ‘tamest’ magpies I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/black-billed-magpie-1571-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-1571-ron-dudley\\"")
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