Clay-colored Sparrow On Dry Mullein.

I'm a fan of sparrows as you all know, and we are blessed with a good variety of them here. There are a couple of less common "grassland" sparrows that breed near our international airport that are given a little extra attention by the local birders. Here is one of them, a Clay-colored Sparrow...with Ottawa being at the very extreme edge of its breeding range (with some field guides not even showing the range extending quite right up to here!).

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4 TC, manual exposure, evaluatvive metering, 1/800s., f/7.1, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, FF, darkened pupil via burn tool, audio used.

Everything about this is beautiful. The BG is gorgeous, however, it does look like it needs another round of NR.

I'm still waiting to get a good look at one of these guys, much less an image. This is lovely, with great inquisitive head turn (presumably in response to your audio). Beautiful grassland BG.

Extremely beautiful image of sparrow with very nice inquisitive pose.Rest as usual just perfect.
Seeing this species for the first time.TFS.

Regards,
Satish.

Nice look at the back, Daniel. You can see the patterns really well.

Very nice different perch.
I really enjoy all the different species you post, amazed about how many you get.
IQ is the usual high quality, A wider view with the sparrow not so centered would look nice for me,
but hard to complain about a close up of this beauty.

I do like his inquisitive pose and the seed head makes for a very nice perch....light, sharpness and backdrop all up to your usual impressive standard Daniel

Wonderful shot.
Love the pose and excellent head turn.
Terrific perch and very nice background.
Well done.

Awesome image of this species. The bird's breeding plumage is fresh and immaculate!
Composition is spot on. Nice bit of background variation on this one.