female shikra with kill

canon 1dmark3
canon 600/4
f-4
shutter speed 1/500
iso-400

This is absolute rocking image with lovely HA , stare , food, BG and sharpness
TFS

Hi Niranjan, Great shot. I like the moment captured, the little feather in the beak and the talons on the kill - the bokeh is excellent and the image is tac sharp, right on the eye, with just right DOF. Well done !

Wonderful image, sharp good BG and DOF. I am constantly surprised and impressed with the variety of species and wildlife images coming from India. I visited this year and would love to return for more bird photography.
Keep them coming.

Niranjan ,

Fantastic shot .
Love the Shikra's pose on th kill . Sharp shot , great lighting , BG and of course the kill , make it a Winner shot all the way .

Niranjan....awesome shot. A little noise-reduction on BG will help a lot. The shot illustrates the power of raptors....liked that a lot. I have never seen this kind of dark plumage on the Shikra.

Yes my thoughts exactly - this is a very dark morph Shikra - very different than the 1000+ I counted in migration in Thailand this past autumn. Also, this is a very slender female - Shikra is a stocky accipiter - similar to Crested Goshawk in size.

dear robert,shikra shows great variation in colour and sizes. i have seen very small shikra's too. may be the habitat they live in has some thing to do?????

Hi - well...likely just "normal" variation within a species - tough to say why. Look at eye color in people - differences are not due to external factors (say cold climate) vs another (warm). What would be interesting to know is how common (or rare) this type of morph is...Is this dark morph found most often in a certain geographic locality? It is also interesting that Rishad Naoroji does not show this plumage in his book (Birds of Prey of the Indian Subcontinent) - have you emailed this photo to him and asked for comments/info?

If this is a first-year bird, will she moult into a plumage that is more familiar, such as:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=10150129

Anyway, lots of questions - my colleagues in Thailand are amazed at this plumage though. We have only seen the "typical" plumage...and we have no idea how rare/common this dark morph is in the far eastern population! Anyway, look for an email from Dr. Chaiyan Kasorndorkbua <trogon@gmail.com> - he might like to include this image in his next book on the raptors of Asia. Thanks!

Best Wishes from the Far East and NYC,

rdc</trogon@gmail.com>

dear robert,this female has her teritory close to my factory. and i see her at least twice in a week. she is adult and breeding bird. i have seen four broods of hers. and i would certainly like to share this picture for the book.
and i agree with you that,variations are not always triggered by geographycal reasons. its a freak may be???
regards
niranjan

Hi Niranjan,

Your adult female Shikra is different - it would be interesting to know how many other dark morph Shikras are in your area. Is the male of this pair a "typical" male - in other words quite light grey above and faintly barred with red below (and a very dark red eye)? Are any of the offspring noticeably dark in color?

In the Far East (such as Thailand/Malaysia/Sumatra), Shikras nest quite close to people, and if no one is shooting these accipiters, they do quite well. Their population seems to be expanding there - tough to provide real data since about the only hard numbers come from raptor migration studies at watch sites like Radar Hill, Pencil Hill...and data from local breeding bird surveys have not really been undertaken in any systematic way.

Thanks - if you send me an email off-list, I will get you the contact info for Dr. Chaiyan - I tried posting his contact info in the previous email but it is automatically removed...

Regards from NYC,

Robert DeCandido PhD