Yellow-billed Magpie
© Alexander Viduetsky
Published:
September 6, 2010
A Yellow-billed Magpie grabs a peanut at Los Alamos County Park in Santa Barbara County, California. Subscriber Alexander Viduetsky says the bird and about a half dozen other magpies, as well as Western Scrub-Jays and Acorn Woodpeckers, “totally ignored me and my big camera and lens” as he sat at a picnic table shooting photos.
“I didn’t see how the magpies were eating the peanuts because a bird would pick up one peanut and then fly away with it in its beak,” he says, noting that they may have been storing the food to eat later.
Alexander used a Canon 40D and a Sigma 300mm f/2.8 telephoto lens with a 1.4x teleconverter on a monopod.
From the archives: Read our June 2005 story about where to find California’s two endemic birds: Yellow-billed Magpie and Island Scrub-Jay. (Subscriber access only.)
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