On the hunt

[Glenn Pure]

173814
This is a Black-necked Stork also known as a Jabiru and female in this image (yellow eye indicates). The bird was working with her male partner to hunt fish in the tidal shallows and they were doing quite well. I'd loved to have waded in to get closer but resisted as the area is infested with saltwater crocodiles and they are expert stealth hunters. Taken in August 2016 on a trip to the northern most part of Australia (Cape York). This was from the shorline just in front of the camping ground at Weipa. Crop is about half the frame area. I had to rotate to fix the horizon.

Thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS (mark I) USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/5000 sec, f8, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird plus sharpening and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur: 0.6 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.

[Tim Foltz]

Glenn, What a great looking bird, I've never seen a stork except maybe at a zoo when I was a kid. Great coloration on this bird and nice action pose.
Exposure and details are nice for a 50% crop.

-Tim

[arash_hazeghi]

Cool! I like the funny pose Glenn, looks as he is running on the water. wish he was angled towards us and you had softer light

TFS

[gail bisson]

The running pose is terrific but the main issue here is the harsh light.
Looks like you had to bring up the shadows under the wing and it has introduced some noise.
Love the iridescence on the head.
These birds look very different from the SA jabiru.
Gail
PS Who's afraid of the big bad saltwater crocs?!!:bg3:

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Glenn, well timed for the hunting behaviour, and the light on the head/face shows up the iridescence very well. When it comes to any Croc, distance is the best safety factor.

Interesting about the yellow eye - our Female Saddle Bill Storks have the yellow eye, and the male a dull brown. :w3

[annmpacheco]

Great looking bird and action frozen at 1/5000! no blur at all! You have good croc sense Glenn!

[John Mack]

Very neat looking stork here. I have never heard of one. Looks like the image held up well to the crop.

[David Salem]

Love the pose and definitely the unique subject. I agree with the comments about the light angle, HA and a little noise in the underwings. Otherwise a pretty cool capture. Well done

[Glenn Pure]

Many thanks for all your comments. They are great birds - and yes, I did see Saddle-billed Storks in Africa last May, Stu, even posted here a shot. They are similar in many respects and I noticed this as soon as I saw one. I agree the light was difficult but not much to do about that. That time of year is usually hot and dry so clouds are a rarity and my time was very limited. Also noted your comments on the noise underwing. I did treat this and noticed there was a little left but could have gone a bit further. I prefer to be conservative when applying NR to my subjects.

As for the crocs, yes, best avoided.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Beautiful bird and nice image. Softer light and slightly better head angle would have improved the shot.

Thanks for sharing