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Fly By Try
Bozeman, Montana
2022

The magpies are always trying to find the easiest, most efficient method of getting at the peanut butter smeared on the swinging pine cone. I keep challenging them by changing the configuration to make their life more interesting. After this setup got old, I lengthened the string so the pine cone would swing more when they go at it. They’re pretty smart and more persistent than I am at the game so it generally doesn’t take too them long to pick the pine cone clean no matter where it is hanging.

Head Over Heels
Bozeman, Montana
2022

Peanut butter smeared on a pine cone–worth the effort.

Misguided Intentions
Bozeman, Montana
2022

Another example of when the autofocus on my camera has different ideas about things than I do. Like the photo I posted the other day, I was trying to get a shot of the magpie. Also, like that other post, I kind of like the result the camera chose. In this case, I wish the magpie wasn’t there at all because the snow against the blurred background is quite nice.

Winter Break
Bozeman, Montana
2022

Two sparrows (maybe–I’m not good at identifying the various varieties of little brown birds we have around) take a break between forays to a bird feeder.

Caught in the Act
Bozeman, Montana
2022

This magpie had a very startled and guilty look after grabbing some ham fat out of our bird feeder. It looks like it was caught red-handed (er, red-beaked) with it’s hand in the cookie jar.

Climb Every Mountain
Bozeman, Montana
2022

I wanted to ask this magpie why it would choose to walk rather than fly, especially in deep snow.

The Underling
Bozeman, Montana
2022

I was trying to focus on the magpie, but the autofocus on my camera had other ideas. That was good in this case though, as I like what came out of it. Too bad it was taken from so far away that I had to do an extreme crop on the image to get in close enough to get the most impactful composition.

Faux Projector
Bozeman, Montana
2022

Funny how your life experiences influence how your mind interprets what your eyes see. This roll of reflective tape on a couple of boxes has been sitting on our counter for several days and every single time I come into the room and first see it, my mind seems to think it’s a Kodak Carousel slide projector. I’m tempted to let it sit there to see how long that reaction continues, but quite frankly it bugs me so I think I’ll forgo that experiment.

Blackberry Treat
Bozeman, Montana
2022

We had some frozen blackberries which just weren’t very good for some reason. Rather than throw them out, I put them out for the birds to snack on. It turns out that even the magpies didn’t care for them. This guy showed up right away and flew off with one. After that though, a magpie would stop by every once in a while and peck around a bit but then turn up its nose, er, beak, at them and fly off without taking anything with them. That behavior lasted until the day I poured some bacon grease over them. Then they disappeared in a hurry. Too bad that flicker from yesterday’s POTD wasn’t around for the blackberries.

My Friend Flicker
Bozeman, Montana
2022

This flicker (female northern flicker to be specific, I think) was hanging around our bird feeder recently, mostly being frustrated because she couldn’t get into the feeder as it’s covered with a wire cage that only smaller birds can get through.

I was shooting at a high ISO speed on my camera when I took this photo so there was quite a bit of noise in the image. Usually I use Photoshop when needed to reduce the noise in images, but in this case I thought it added a nice, sort of painterly effect, so I actually enhanced it a bit.