White-breasted Nuthatch

[Andrew McLachlan]

One from a couple of days ago at the backyard feeder set-up from the comfort of my home-made insulated and heated photo blind. This Nuthatch was visiting the suet feeder that is screwed to the branch behind the bird and somewhat parallel to the ground, but did have to clone out a little bit of the suet cage that was still visible below the branch. Also cropped a smidge off the left side.

Nikon D800 with DX crop activated for additional reach (kinda like having a built in teleconverter)
Nikon 80-400mm VR lens (600mm equivalent)
ISO 500
f8 @ 1/640 sec

Look forward to comments.

122863


<iframe width="468" height="60" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="http://mer54715.datafeedfile.com/widget/aff_widget_prdt_generate-2.0.php?aff_num=10536&aff_net=1&widget_num=1748"><p>Sorry your browser does not support iFrame</p></iframe>

[Nick Palmieri]

Sweet capture! Nice perch and BG. Detail, exposure, and sharpness look good. I also like his pose. Looks like some noise in the BG but I am looking on a non-calibrated and bright laptop...so lets see what others think.

[Richard Stern]

Hi Andrew,

I love the crop, pose, and sharpness of the bird. I also like the pattern on the tree branch. I agree the bg is very slightly noisy, but not enough to be noticeable, and basically it looks fine. However I feel there is something about the color of the bird that doesn't look right - I have taken the liberty of playing around a bit with the white balance, and came up with this version, that to my eye looks more natural. I hope you don't mind, and I'd be interested to see if others agree with me or not.

Richard

[Karl Egressy]

Nice pose, sharpness, details and background. I see some noise in the background but as Richard stated it is not much noticeable.
I also noticed that there is a blue cast in the bird's body which often happens when the light is dull. Richard's fix is an improvement.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks for comments guys and for noticing the cast...I will fix the color cast up.