Grey-headed Swamphen

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Captured this image in Harns Marsh last month. I saw what I thought was a Purple Gallinule searching for food amongst the marsh reeds and dense leafy plants. As he started to head in our direction and eventually emerging into the open, another photographer standing nearby mentioned it was a Grey-headed Swamphen. A lifer for me. C&C welcome.

D4S, Nikon 500mm f4/G + 1.4TC, 1/1600s, f 7.1, ISO 2500, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley Gimbal head.

Geoffrey




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[Allen Sparks]

Hi Geoffrey,
wow - look at those feet! that's wild. Congrats on the lifer - I've never seen one.
Bird looks a tad pixelated to me - maybe slightly oversharpened? Though the setting is a bit distracting it does show off the habitat.
Allen

[Bill Dix]

Congratulations on this lifer! I didn't realize you had gotten such a clear look at him; I should have stuck around. :e3 Great pose with great foot showing. Yes, maybe a tad oversharpened. An interesting bird with interesting story, once considered an invasive and now recognized as "countable" by the ABA.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Thanks Allen and Bill. I agree it was over sharpened a bit, but this bird has a unique assortment of coarse head, neck, breast feathers and the primaries, thigh/belly, and tail are much finer. I should have selectively sharpened as I've done a bit in the repost.

Geoffrey


167942

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[Isaac Grant]

These birds are invasive but are established enough that they are countable. As are a great many others in southern Florida. They are bigger and stronger than the local Purple Gallinules and are pushing them out which is not good.

I like the pose and the habitat. Works for these birds. I agree that there was something a bit off with the first shot but not sure it is fixed in the repost. To me the problem is that the image is over exposed and I'm not 100% that it was tack sharp. Was the focus point on the head? The foot looks sharper to me than the head. I imported into PS and there were spots on the bird and the habitat that were all at 255 on my screen. I did the following which to me look better but again not 100%.

Lowered the midtones -10.
Added Contrat +7
Added Saturation +5
Ran noise reduction on bird and background.
Smart sharpened the bird at .3 and 50.

Thoughts? Of course it is much better to work on the original large file and not on this tiny one...

[stuart wanuck]

niceky corrected elusive bird