I see we don’t have a bucket today. So here is a short one.
As I have written before, I have been frustrated in my attempts to get a photo of the iconic Yellow-Billed Magpie.
This bird only lives in the Central Valley of California. Before the West Nile virus hit the West Coast, the Yellow-Billed Magpie was fairly common and I would see flocks of them on local lawns and in the fields all over the Sacramento area. The virus devastated the species. It is estimated that we lost 2/3th to 3/4th of the entire population.
They are much scarcer now and they totally disappeared from my neighborhood.
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I occasionally see them but never when I have a camera with me. Even when I have my phone, they have always disappeared before I could snap a shot.
Last Friday I was meeting some friends and just as I got out of my car, I saw 2 magpies standing on top of a cargo container at the end of the lot. I grabbed my phone and took some shots. Once they realized I was looking at them, they flew away.
For some reason, I kept getting errors on trying to load several other better photos I took of the bird, so I posted the only photo that would load.
Yellow-Billed Magpies are celebrated on a pedestrian bridge over Interstate 5 in Sacramento
Had a couple of nice warm sunny days last week before we were hit with plenty of rain yesterday. More rain is expected tomorrow before we get some clearing and maybe a nice warm and sunny weekend.
Please comment on when you had success in seeing or getting a photo of a nemesis critter — bird, critter, reptile, fish, insect, flower, etc.
