South Polar Skua

[Don Nelson]

Rare 40 miles off the coase of the Pacific Northwest with less than 10K pair breeding in the Antarctic. Image made with Canon 7D + 1.4XTCII + 400mm DO from deck of small fishing boat in moderate swell. EC not recorded. This is about 1/4 frame crop -- the bird rarely comes this close to the boat.

[Don Nelson]

With noise reduced in rear....
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[Jeff Dyck]

Don - you have achieved some nice detail in the feathers, but the image seems a bit noisy to me (notably in the shadow details) - I would consider running this through some noise reduction software to try and clean things up a bit. I think a smidge more black (i.e. use Selective Color and add some more black) would help punch up the image.

Edit: Looks like you beat me to it on the noise reduction!

[Don Nelson]

Thanks, Jeff - good suggestions
Hows this look?
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[Daniel Cadieux]

I'm sure it was a thrill to be able to photograph this guy, let alone see it! I do wish you would have taken the image before it had flown past you. I did give you somewhat of a glance back though. It was a good idea to take care of the noise on the far wing, but in the last repost it was done too aggressively - rendering the wing smooth and void of any detail (P.S. the blacks look much better in that last repost)

[Myer Bornstein]

Nice capture, Donapparently, we were on the same boat on that trip. I do have a number of photos but none as good as yours

[Don Nelson]

Good to hear you got a shot off, considering how the boat was rolling in the wavesand how suddenly this one came in. Too bad this guy didn't hang around. Most people don't realize that you can't chum for this species like we did for the albatross, fulmar, bullar's/sooty/pink-footed/fleshfooted shearwaters and Fork-tailed Storm Petrels -- we saw 11 Skuas and only this one came within 2 miles of the boat. The wings give a clue that they fly like Falcons - and attack other birds for their fish. This one flew in at an angle, tightly circled the boat nearly overhead and was gone -- sun angle was wrong on 80% of the tight circle, and wing position on my series of images wrong on the all but this one. Pelagic Trips off the PNW aren't like those off the east coast -- I've been out of Cape Hatteras, Boston area and Halifax and all these were spring/fall but it was always flat water. I'm happy with this capture and just need to clean up the noise without killing the detail ! I can always hope for another chance on another trip! How'd you do with the Bullar's? We had over 300 but none too close.

[Myer Bornstein]

Don
Hard to say I do have the Flesh-footed Shearwater. yes the rockiness of the boat was hard I just deleted over 100 pictures do to focus. I would focus on theey then the boated rocked :2eyes2: