Northern Saw-whet owl

[Shirley Woods]

Taken at 10am in a mixed forest in Nova Scotia on 16 May. Canon 40D with 24-105 f4 lens set at 90mm f5.6 1/160 sec.
No processing other than conversion from DNG to JPEG.
I have Lightroom and CS3, but little skill with either.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Shirley,
A fill flash may have helped a bit in this instance to fill in the shadow areas of the mouth and eyes. The biggest issue is the forest itself with all the bright spots in the BG. If you had a longer lens it would have been preferable to get the BG a little less distracting. Nice clean perch and pose.

[Shirley Woods]

Thank you for your comments.
These owls are not very shy in remote habitat. The bird (a female) perched on the branch for about 90 seconds which gave me a chance to snap three shots with fill-in flash set at -2/3. Then, for insurance, I turned off the flash and got three more before she flew away. I agree that a longer lense would have been better, but I had been taking wild flowers on the forest floor.