Red-breasted Nuthatch.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Here's another of the common year-round "residents". Taken in the same area as my previous Chickadee image but with a different perch and slightly different BG (naturally more vibrant). Small bag of black-oil sunflower seeds hung below the perch.

Canon 40D + 100-400L @400mm, aperture priority, evaluative metering, 1/250s., f/6.3, ISO 500, no EC, natural light, handheld, small crop right and top for comp.

[Kiran Poonacha]

pretty looking thing DC.. liked the complimenting colors in the frame...

[Danny J Brown]

A little attitude being shown by this tiny nuthatch....one of my nemesis birds although we have them here where I live. I agree with Kiran about the matching colors of the bird and bokeh....I like that. Nice perch, too.

DB

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

Perfect color in BG for this little fellow.
A little more DOF would have been nice, but looks like lighting conditions wouldn't allow without pushing the ISO up a lot.

If you have any wide shots of your setup, with the hanging bag, would be curious to see how you do it. Sounds like a good way to do setups on the fly!

Cheers

Randy

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Daniel, loved the pose and the shooting angle. Great details and colors....and HA of course.

[Andrew Merwin]

These guys are so small & so fast that I have always failed to get an image with this quality. The BG is wonderfully complimentary to the nuthatch. I like the pose & the perch. How far away from the nuthatch were you?

[Pieter de Waal]

Lovely complimentary colours in this image Daniel with again nice perch selection. I also like the feather detail, eye contact and pose.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys!

Randy, one of these days I should take pictures of these impromptu setups! I just use either a snack or sandwhich sized "ziplock" plastic bag and hook it by piercing a snag close to the top (above the "zip" so I can reseal and reuse it after) or just letting it sit on the ground. One advantage I find is that many times it takes longer for individual birds to reach their prize inside the bag...sometimes up to 8-10 seconds...which means the next one in line, the one on the perch, is there too waiting for that long:).

Andrew, I am about 8-10 feet from the subject.

[Paul Lagasi]

I like the pose and head angle, spot on with exposure and focus. Nice capture Dan.

[Craig Brelsford]

Another instructive portrait from you, Daniel. You handled it about as well as one could expect. You creatively placed the bait in a position where your birds would be set against that warm, inviting background. The only problem is DOF. In the situation in which you found yourself, a shot more in profile would have been optimal.