Lewis Woodpecker Hawking for Insects

[Paul Lagasi]

I wanted a better photo for my collection of a Lewis Woodpecker, so I spent a day in an area that was alive with them.
Oosoyos is in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, where back in 2007 I'd seen my first Lewis's.
I found a B & B up in the hills that had a family of 7 and watched them. Soon they became comfortable with me,
allowing me to get close.
These woodpeckers are the only ones I've ever seen hawking for insects like flycatchers.
I was lucky and caught this one returning to his post perch. I didn't get the perch in the image so I added it from another image.
I used Topaz Spicify on the image. Should I have played with the settings to remove the glow around the bird?????

Lots of great work in the last few weeks, hopefully tomorrow I can comment on them. After I get a good nights sleep. Jet lag sucks.

[Judy Howle]

Fantastic capture of the wp and I like the proessing although the glow is a little distracting.

[Dennis Bishop]

Nice job with the compositing. And the capture. I don't know how easy it would've been to preclude the halos by changing settings, but fixing them isn't much of a chore. Make a duplicate layer and select the post and the woodpecker. (I used the lasso tool and made sure the two selections were well outside each halo.) Then, do a content aware fill. That'll give you a sky blue layer. If you blend that with Darker Color, you'll have the bird, the perch, the sky, and no halos.

[denise ippolito]

Beautiful capture! Nice details and I think that the fanned wings are spectacular! Agree about the halo.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Paul, a gorgeous capture. I think the halos are pretty distracting and I'm anxious to try Dennis' remedy on some of my own halos

[Paul Lagasi]

Thanks folks, I removed the halos...

[denise ippolito]

Beautiful!

[Indranil Sircar]

The repost just nails it!!! awesome capture and I just love fanned those fanned wings!