Male Red Crossbill

[Gunnlaugur Sigurjónsson]

Hi, I am pretty new here. I have posted once in the "Eager To Learn Image Critiques" forum but will now take the step and post in the Avian forum. All C&C welcome.
This is a photo of a male Red Crossbill that is a new bird species in Iceland as increased forests with evergreens have made habitat for those birds that didn´t exist before. Taken with canon 1DmarkIV, canon 800mm f5,6IS lens using a manfrotto monopod. Iso 500, f5,6, speed 1/1250sec. Post processed with lightroom 3.3 and cropped, the bird was in the center of the orginal photo.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>

[dankearl]

I would take some off the right but overall a very nice photo and I like the perch.

[Arthur Morris]

For me this is a superb image. I am fine with the COMP and I love the sharpness and the clean BKGR. I especially love the coy manner that the birds head is cocked. If you held a gun to my head I would wish for a bit less head turn towards us.

Is this a young male?

Welcome to Avian. I look forward to seeing more of your work.

[gail bisson]

WOW! You sure are off to an impressive start! A superb shot. Love the perch and the comp. Love it!
Gail

[Tom Rambaut]

Just post more and learn.

Great image and I love the colours, clean BG and the eye is drawn to the bird.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the pose, perch and BG. Well done!

[Ofer Levy]

Bird looks great and I like the BG and natural perch. I feel this image is begging for a vertical presentation if you got enough room at the bottom - here is a quick repost just to show the idea.

[Gunnlaugur Sigurjónsson]

94535
Thanks for the comments. Of course I choose one of my best photos to show in the first post. :S3:
I still have lot to learn espesially in long lens technique but usually one in several hundreds of bird photographs I take looks OK.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
I am not sure about the age of the bird, it was flying around in the woods with a female and showed itself for a minute or so in this tree which was about 3meters in height, one of the pleasures of taking pictures of tree dwelling birds in Iceland is how short the trees usually are. :bg3: <o:p></o:p>
I managed to get higher than the bird with the low winter sun in the back and got a few pictures, the picture is taken at 3pm, the 12th of mars.<o:p></o:p>
Here is the picture in a vertical format, it might actually look better this way. <o:p></o:p>

[Arthur Morris]

Ofer's VERT is much better than yours as far as COMP. I still like the original post best.

I asked about the age only because male Red Crossbills are red...

[Ofer Levy]

Used your second repost and cropped off the top and sides to get this.