Scarlet Honeyeater

[Glenn Pure]

171933
I took this a few days ago at the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra. The male bird does look this red (no saturation added) and is not that common around these parts. The bird is quite small (10-11 cm in length) and, like most small birds particularly honeyeaters, is hyperactive. Luckily they will slow down a fraction when feeding. The plant in this shot is also interesting. It is Grevillea wilkinsonii and was only discovered in the 1990s in the high country south of Canberra. There are only a couple of hundred plants known in the wild and listed as Endangered. Fortunately, it has successfully been brought into cultivation. Crop is about two thirds of the frame area and bird originally centred in uncropped frame.

Capture details: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/500 sec, f6.3, 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 bird and stronger NR to background. Main subjects only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian blur) after final size reduction.

[Colin Driscoll]

Lovely pose Glenn and nice soft light. Well detailed.

[Isaac Grant]

Details of the bird look very nice. I know how difficult it is to get these little speedsters so you did well. To my eye the reds are over saturated. Can't tell you the science but birds with rich red colors often come out over saturated out of the camera. Same goes for shooting at sunrise or sunset. The images need post work to make them look more natural. You could try going to the red channel in selective color and adding 50-90 points of cyan and see if that helps to tone it down. Also you can try to adjust the saturation of only the reds in hue/saturation as well.

[William Dickson]

Very nice Glenn. The bright colours on the head of the bird, stand out real well against the BG. I really like how the perch blends in with the rest of the BG. Very natural looking. I can't comment on the reds, as I have never seen this bird before, but the feather detail on the bird looks real good. I like how my eye was immediately drawn to the beautiful head on the bird. Wished we got these type of birds over here in Scotland, I would love to photograph such beauty.

Will

[Ian McLachlan]

Well done Glenn. Thats the colour .Spot on. In the breeding season some of these colours do look over the top.Some of the male fairy wrens right now Sept/Oct.take on colours that are breathtaking .William there's always aeroplane.!

[gail bisson]

What a great bird. Reds look nice with lots of detail although I have to admit I have never seen this bird IRL.
Thank you for the natural history lesson- always appreciated.
The BG is a bit busy for my taste.
IQ is very good and excellent exposure,
Gail

[Joseph Przybyla]

Nice capture, Glenn. The bird looks good on my display. The background is busy but I have been there done that. All in all a nice image. Beautiful bird nicely shown. Thank you for sharing.

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you all for your comments. The red is very intense but pretty close to what it looks like. The eye can deceive though. As for the background, I was expecting some comments. With these birds and many other small birds, to survive, they rarely venture into open situations so this is actually a relatively clean shot of one of these. Most of the time they are buried in the middle of bushes where they can better avoid attack by more aggressive honeyeaters (typically). It would be a rare shot indeed to have one on a neat perch with clean background - but that would certainly not represent how this bird lives.