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Ciameth — Winter Perch
Published: 2012-01-07 20:38:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 535; Favourites: 17; Downloads: 0
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Description
Yellow-billed Magpies forage during the day, returning to familiar roosts for the evening. Crepuscular hours are the best time to see them--right when they're active, but before they've spread out too far. This Yellow-billed magpie is perched in one of the species' favorite trees, the Northern California Black Walnut. Unlike crows, I've never witnessed or read of a magpie intentionally dropping the walnuts on the road in front of cars (or bikers). They might not be strong enough; they're smaller and slimmer than the Black-billed magpie. But they are clever enough to follow the crows around and swift enough to swoop in quickly to steal the walnut fragments before the crows get to them.Related content
Comments: 15
How'd you manage to get close enough for this shot? All the ones and I could find were skittish and kept flying away before we could get into range for a decent shot.
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"Drive by shooting!" I've found that I can bike within 10 feet of them easily. So long as I don't stop cruising (slowly) they won't fly away. The second I stop or get off my bike, they dart off. YBMA are rather shy corvids until spring comes around and they start taking every scrap of food they can get back to their nests (the transformation is incredible--during spring, I've had a magpie steal food from my hand)! I took this shot from my bike along Old Davis Rd before the horses & creek. I've also had good luck at the raptor center, where the magpies steal mice from open containers or handicapped birds if they can get it. I can get closer to them on foot at the center, because they see a person carrying around a bucket of dead mice as an opportunity. I'm hoping to get some shots of the fledgling chicks this spring, since there are three nests within plain sight at the center.
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Ah, we were trying around the horses, as we didn't see any at the raptor center itself. I was considering trying a more human active region of the campus, as I've noticed with other corvid species that they seem a lot less skittish in areas where there's a higher chance of positive interactions with humans (I guess chance of feeding is the main one. Stop to get a raven picture middle of nowhere along a highway, and chances are it'll fly off. Stop to take a picture of scenery in the Petrified Forest NP, and chances are there will be a raven standing next to your car door by the time you get back to it.).
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I don't think I've ever seen yellow bills on central campus or in the main town of Davis, unless it's right along somewhere more agricultural or undeveloped, so that probably would have been even less successful. If you ever come back through Davis, try Russell between the streets of Wake Forest and Lake Blvd. There's a bike path along that road where magpies roost at night. Even if you don't catch the lot of them after dawn or before dusk before they go off foraging in the adjacent field and elsewhere, I think those magpies--living across the street from suburbia, on a busy road with lots of pedestrians and bikers--might be less shy. I can stop my bike under one if it's in a tree and it won't fly away.
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I don't think a return trip anytime soon is likely, but I'll try to keep that in mind if one does.
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That is a pretty photo and Magpie! Never saw a yellow billed one
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Daww. and I stopped by Davis and found some yellow-bills around the equine area.
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I hope you were able to get some pictures. You take such nice photos.
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Well there were some magpies in some photos. Don't think I got any great ones. They spook easy.
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We have the Black-billed ones here, I have never seen a Yellow-billed magpie before.
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They have an extremely small range, and even within that they're recovering from a West nile outbreak in the population. I've never seen a Black-bill in the wild (but there is one that keeps the Secretary Bird company at the San Diego Zoo).
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The Yellow-bills get West Nile? Yikes, that is no good.
We have gobs and gobs of Black-bills here. Damn smart birds.
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The estimate is that West Nile destroyed 50-60% of the population in two years, and there only is one population of Yellow-billed Magpies. But they're still common and the population will be ok long term--there's just not currently "gobs and gobs" of Yellow-bills which is sad because they're pretty. They're also loud and annoying (when a group of them gets riled up outside my window in the early morning), but I don't mind. It makes them entertaining.
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Yes, they can definitely be noisy and annoying at times. But they are interesting to watch.
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