Magpie Madness

How better to define and excite a beautiful landscape than with a bird of paradise?

Those who live among black-billed magpies may become inured to their charms. It would take centuries to inure me to a bird this magnificent.

John and Durrae moved to Bozeman from Pennsylvania. They've lived here almost as long as we've lived in Ohio--17 years or so. But they still love the magpies.

They love them so much they buy big bags of cat food to keep them fat and sassy.


Well, who wouldn't want to see something like this on their deck a couple of times a day? The air rang with their jaunty jake-jake calls.

Note the bit of kibble in mid-gulp on the right-hand bird...


I could have spent days capturing flight images of magpies through the sliding glass doors. Had it not been cold, I'd have loved to open them and sit just inside, the house as my blind.

These birds are one big flash pattern. Pure white primary feathers are rather rare; generally the flight feathers of birds are dark, because melanin strengthens them, and the primaries, being propellers, take the brunt of the wear. They do have a nifty black picotee edge, which I'm sure helps with preventing too much wear. You can see that edging in Photo 2.

The pied coloration of magpies has to do with sending visual signals over vast open terrain, with gathering one's compatriots for raids and mischief. Nothing translates like black and white in these huge, often low-contrast spaces.

Magpies are a gift to the Montana landscape. Though I'm sure our nesting songbirds would disagree (magpies have an appetite for eggs and chicks), a few magpies sure would dress up the meadows of Ohio. Bet they'd love Zick Dough.

A Montana Haven

On our way to Yellowstone, we stopped at the home of friends outside Bozeman, Montana. It was a gray, rainy, cold day, but the birds and animals that flock around John and Durrae's didn't seem to mind. Their yard was a western wonderland for these Ohioans.

Let's just start with the view out the living room window.

and proceed to the lazuli bunting just outside the kitchen window screen.

Ah, but there was more to come. This little Richardson's ground squirrel (everyone in Montana calls them "gophers," even though they aren't...
charmed me with her muzzlepuff cleaning routine.
Kind of a shrinky prairie dog, they are pretty much everywhere in eastern Montana, running across the road, tails straight up in an exclamation point. When I first visited Montana as a 12-year-old, I wept for each one my sister's car hit. I cried a lot those first few days. And then realized that I didn't have tears enough for all the gophers with a death wish.

It was nice to see one close up, to see the sweet animal in what so many perceive as brainless video-game targets. I wish I understood what makes them decide to cross a deserted highway just as your car comes careening through at 75 mph.

There was much more to be enjoyed in John and Durrae's yard...

Prairie Dogs and Mule Deer

One of our favorite spots at Theodore Roosevelt National Park: a place called Buck Hill. It's hard to beat the view from the top.
We feel compelled to photograph each other at the modest summit (There really aren't any mountains in North Dakota).

The kids love to shelter under a ledge and pretend they're hunter/gatherers, looking for dinner, building a fire, flensing skins, perhaps.

Dinner is everywhere--mule deer are plentiful.

It's a great place for wildlife photography. You're largely ignored, and the tableaux are stunning.


The biggest bull bison are often solitary, like this one. Imagine yourself on that winding road, passing from vision to vision. That's TRNP, at dusk in June.

A spotted towhee rasps out its song against the badland backdrop.

We round a corner to find a mother prairie dog and her three exclamation point babies!!!

They wondered why this woman was groaning...

never realizing that they and their tiny hands might be the cause

Three perfect little sod poodles in the slanting light of an endless June evening.