Glenn Pure
09-10-2017, 11:42 PM
171423
The birds are immature Australian Magpies. Very common birds but very intelligent and playful. The bird on the right had the younger one by the wing tip trying to stop it from begging for food from one of the adults. Another play routine I've only witnessed once was a bird that had found a short, round stick a centimetre or two in diameter. It was trying the balance on this on a slope with the result that the stick would roll down the slope with bird trying to 'walk' the rotating stick. It did this for a minute or two as we watched and seemed to be having a lot of fun. Another more common play routine for young birds is for one to lay on its back and play dead while another one has a go at it. Image shown was photographed at a golf course a few minutes walk from my home in Canberra.
Technical: Canon 80D with EF 100-400 MkII at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/3200 sec, f8, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Very light NR applied to birds in focus and stronger NR to background. Selective lighting adjustments to birds to bring out detail in whites and blacks. Sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool) after final size reduction.
The birds are immature Australian Magpies. Very common birds but very intelligent and playful. The bird on the right had the younger one by the wing tip trying to stop it from begging for food from one of the adults. Another play routine I've only witnessed once was a bird that had found a short, round stick a centimetre or two in diameter. It was trying the balance on this on a slope with the result that the stick would roll down the slope with bird trying to 'walk' the rotating stick. It did this for a minute or two as we watched and seemed to be having a lot of fun. Another more common play routine for young birds is for one to lay on its back and play dead while another one has a go at it. Image shown was photographed at a golf course a few minutes walk from my home in Canberra.
Technical: Canon 80D with EF 100-400 MkII at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/3200 sec, f8, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Very light NR applied to birds in focus and stronger NR to background. Selective lighting adjustments to birds to bring out detail in whites and blacks. Sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool) after final size reduction.