On the Great Horned Owl Live Cam, we don’t yet have owls, but we do have beautiful vistas of Montana and Magpies in winter coats!
Black-billed Magpies are birds of shrubsteppe [low rainfall natural grassland] and riparian [area between land and a river or stream] environments, their main requirements being trees or tall shrubs for nesting and open habitats such as grasslands, sagebrush, meadows, and pasture lands for foraging. They frequent riparian thickets in winter and also congregate around feedlots, barnyards, landfills, and other human-made environments (Trost 1999). They build a bulky domed stick nest (the nest cup made of mud and lined with grass) in a variety of tree and shrub species.
Read more from Montana Audubon here, and take a virtual visit to Montana on the Live Cam!
(Photo from explore.org fan Samantha Eye)
