Anything will do

[Stu Bowie]

A juvi malachite has a black beak, and an adult has a red beak, so this little fellow is probably a teenager as his beak is inbetween. The sun hadnt even come up when I captured this, as these guys dont hang around long. He flittered about, caught this little fish, and disappeared. Taken at a wetlands south of Johannesburg.

Canon 1D Mark IV
100-400 @ 400mm
1/160
F/5.6
ISO 1250

Manual exposure

Taken at 5.27am

[Peter Scholer]

Excellent angle and pose to show all the wonderful color and detail. Under the pre sun lighting the exposure looks so even and appealing. Great technique to capture the flighty bird at that shutter speed @ 400mm. Well done. An extremely attractive species.

[Robert Holguin]

Excellent shot Stuart.
I really like the curved perch, wonderful background, and excellent head turn.
Very well done.

[Mike Milicia]

What a little jewel of a bird! Nice lookback pose with excellent BG and comp!

[christopher galeski]

very nice stuart.nice BG and pose,you mentioned the sun had not come up,were I am, Iv been waiting months for the sun to come up:bg3:.thanks.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Stu I am sure you considered differing options also e.g. placing the bird a little lower and slightly more to the right, I initially had a slight reservation but I soon got over it! I really like the image as presented, composition good, exposure excellent and the subject superb - another gem in your collection.

[gail bisson]

This is really nice Stuart.
I like the HA and the prey in the mouth.
I like the comp as is but could also see a version with a bit off from the bottom.
I really like the 2 toned BG as well.
Nice one,
Gail

[Karl Egressy]

Cute little colourful bird, giving you an nice looking back pose, Stuart. Love the composition.

[Dumay de Boulle]

Nice image design and great colors. Good clean BG and a strong comp...Very nice bud!

[Rachel Hollander]

Stuart - beautiful colors and detail with a sweet bokeh. I also like the curve of the perch. I'm wondering if just a tiny bit more sharpening of the eye is needed. And if it is within your ethics I would consider cloning the tiny white dot on the vertical branch just above where it meets the horizontal one.

TFS,
Rachel

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Stuart

Love the image as is, but could also see it as a 16:9 crop. I think the long branch that extends to the left really lends itself to this wider aspect ratio. Either way, it's a stunner with a very nice pose.

Miguel

[Stu Bowie]

you mentioned the sun had not come up,where I am, Iv been waiting months for the sun to come up:bg3:.thanks.

Good one Chris. With all due respect, you can keep your cold weather with rain and snow. At present our average days are around 34-36 deg C.

Thank you all for the feedback and comments everyone.

[Vivaldo Damilano]

Stu lovely capture, love the clarity and the soft light. A pano crop could also work nicely here.

[PhilCook]

Now that's one good looking bird Stuart, light is very nice especially considering the sun had not yet risen

[Grace Scalzo]

Stuart, the bird is about as sweet as it gets. Nice and sharp and with a prey item as well. The one thing that bothers me about this frame is the broken branch in the URC. I was messing around with browser scrolls and when I scroll down to just where I need to eliminate it, I find the resulting composition works. What do you think? The small in the frame bird works so perfectly here.

[Stu Bowie]

I was messing around with browser scrolls and when I scroll down to just where I need to eliminate it, I find the resulting composition works. What do you think?

Hi Grace, I played with the scroll and can see your point. For the malachite not to be too tight after scrolling, one has to just have a fine line of cropping at the end of the broken branch to make it work.