Leucistic Catbird

[Jerry Barrack]

Photographic data: Canon Eos 1D Mark IV, Canon 600mmEF F/4L IS USM plus 1.4x III at F/5.6, 1/500 sec, ISO 400. Taken at the Allendale Celery Farm Natural Area, Allendale, NJ on 10/01/2013 at 10:45am

This was a rare siting of a leucistic bird, a catbird, and it was the first time I had heard of that term. When it was first spotted it was called an albino. When one of the top birders saw it, he commented that the eyes and legs were not colorless and it was therefore leucitic. Any comments would be appreciated. The bird hung around for about a week and was fairly cooperative. So much so that I even got a 20 second video of it.

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Jerry. A very interesting and striking bird for sure. Great to get a look at a rare bird too. Nice pose and HA...and I don't mind the BG. We have catbirds here "down under", but they're a greeny colour and indeed sound like a cat! Did you apply a "painterly" effect in post? The image is somewhat soft and there's quite a bit of noise overall. I'm not sure what's happening at the bottom of the image but this oof section is somewhat distracting.

[David Roach]

What a nice find and getting this image is the icing on the cake. Love the look back and the colors. The dappled light and the noise/artifacts take away slightly from the image but not the catch. TFS

ps
Those stacked primaries...

[John Mack]

Whoa what a neat find and treat to photograph. Image quality does not look good at all.

[Jerry Barrack]

Thanks Paul for your constructive comments. I am very new to posting here and haven't figured out yet what I am doing wrong to get the "painterly look" that you describe. They appear much sharper when I am Photoshop than when I post. Someone else commented on another of my posts that it also had a "painterly" look. I guess that is a polite way of saying it is not sharp. :S3: I have enjoyed looking at your posts and hope I can figure this out. Thanks again.

[Jerry Barrack]

Thanks John. I don't know what I am doing wrong when I reduce the file size to 600 KB but is really ruining the images. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Paul Burdett]

Jerry: I'm sure others will chime in here, but perhaps there is a problem in how are you preparing your images for posting on this forum? In Photoshop my images are always saved as 16bit Tiff (Adobe RGB colour space) For posting to this forum I change the mode to 8 bit, convert from Adobe RGB to srgb, change image size to 1900px on the longest side, and then under the File menu select: Export for the web/ jpg with file size under 600kb (max is 600kb I think). Apologies if you already do this or similar...just trying to offer suggestions. The noise removal is easier to do, either in Photoshop or via a plugin...I use Topaz nenoise AI and find it works very well. Cheers.

[Jerry Barrack]

Paul, Thanks for the advice. I haven't been doing it that way but I will certainly try it with the next post. I always admired the quality of most of the images that are posted, and that certainly goes for yours. Thanks again,

[Daniel Cadieux]

What an exceptional bird this is! I've never heard of a leucistic Gray Catbird. Very cool. I have no doubt the image looked a lot better than before resizing and posting. Easiest method would be to go to "Save for web" in photoshop: make sure it is set to convert to jpeg, srgb, and type in the desired size on the long side, and use the slider to tweak the image quality (start at 100%, and if it is under 600 kb you are all set. If not slide to 99%, then 98%, etc., until it is under 600kb.). You can go down to 80-85% and still look great.

[Jerry Barrack]

Thanks Dan for the advice. I have always admired your images. My favorite camera for years was the 7D Mark II and the quality of your images proves Artie is right. It has been very frustrating for me trying to resize the image for the blog and your advice, as well Paul's has been most helpful. We'll see with the next few that I post!