Mud sandwich

[Colin Driscoll]

This is a Magpie-lark, a male as indicated by the black throat. More common names are Mudlark or Peewee (call sounds a bit like).
These are mud nesting birds and up until a few weeks ago our long drought had left the ground so dry that there was no mud for them to build with.
Now after good rain they are busy constructing.
1DXII 600 f4 III HH
1/2500 f7.1 iso800
Selective toning down the whites, cropped and light sharpen PS2020

[Ernst Zigmund]

Nicely done getting one at work.
The males look like bandits to me.

[Ivan Sjogren]

What a bird! Would love to see this one some day and it seems like you captured it in the most beautiful pose while showing of that wing pattern.
Nice wing position, eye contact and the prey item adds alot. I think the sky as a background works but something more interesting would have benefitted the image. Expsoure looks okay too but there are almost no fine feather details, especially in the blacks. It looks all smooth like you have applied to much NR(?). You should be able to life some more out of this by going back to the RAW.

[Bill Dix]

Great looking bird with nice wing position, nicely showing his mud-gathering. You might be able to pull some detail out of the blacks.

[John Mack]

Cool looking bird. The mud is a nice bonus. Agree the detail is the blacks is pretty lacking.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the wing position the image is held by poor IQ, the head looks soft and crunchy and the blacks have almost zero details...

TFS

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Colin, good flight pose including the food item. I agree, with a ss of 1/2500, the head should be sharper.

[Colin Driscoll]

Righto, what will I have done wrong here, the bird, particularly the head is tack sharp in the RAW image. I know the blacks are poorly defined and that is because the bird was flying directly into the sun, so little reflected light. Still might be able to extract a bit more though. Not a huge crop either.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Colin ... nice behaviour shot .

Good question about the fault ??!! How can we say something , without knowing what you have done in post .
You have a strong sharpening halo around the subject in parts ... looking at the presented image , i would say the shot is not sharp .

TFS Andreas