Most of the time the males get the attention of photographers, but who can deny the beauty of the females...especially when they pose nicely in a nice setting? The BG is a little busier than most of my images, but I rather like the hint of young forest habitat here. I did lighten the OOF BG branch in front of the subject to minize its' impact on the image. Photographed near a feeder.
Canon 7D + 100-400L @400mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/200s., f/6.3, ISO 800 (settings histogram checked), natural light, handheld, small crop to help the composition, darkened the pupil via burn tool as the eye was glossed over with reflections.
Last edited by Daniel Cadieux; 03-19-2013 at 06:38 PM.
Nice frame , the over all whites are like mute colour and the red on the head and yellow of the beak stand out.
i love the way you have presented the image.
Nice shot. Like the feel this one has and the BG looks nice to me. The bird pops off the screen and has a 3D look to it. Its very sharp and exposed well. That touch of red in all that grey really adds allot. Well done
Small bird photography is never easy, you have a lovely shot here, nice cold wintery feel to it , the splash of red really jumps out. Quite like the oof braches in the bg as it gives a sense of the habitat these birds live in.
Good to see you've returned to photographing real birds rather than the charismatic mega-avians. Nice over the shoulder posture and you deftly managed to get the image with the entire bird unobstructed by branches.
Having had a long time interest in redpolls I see much of interest in the individual that you nicely captured I could prattle on for pages about age, gender , and species of redpolls and where this bird fits in. Let me just mention that male redpolls do not acquire (deposit) red pigments on the breast until after the second year. For the first year males can not be distinguished from females at a glance.
Excellent Dan love the setting and the pose, the exposure is very good, I particularly like the dark and white plumage. The red crown is very nice indeed but I wonder if it is clipped a little.
Very nice Daniel.
I like the look back pose and the pop of red. Nice wintry feel.I find the eye a bit unnatural and would back off a bit on the eye doctoring.
We had a flock of 50 + redpolls at our feeders this afternoon frantically feeding. I think they are getting ready to migrate.
Gail
Thank you all!! Declan, I'm always wanting to learn: If any, which clue(s) would make this one perhaps a young male? I have to mention that I did notice the subtle pink hue going on on the cheek when processing the image...would this perhpas be an indication of the gender?
The only class you can identify with confidence is ASY (older) males. I'm avoiding "adult" as the one year old males can and do breed, they just are not as colorful. One can age many passerines to some degree by the shape of the tail feathers with the first set being more pointed than those acquired in subsequent molts. Redpolls molt once per year after the breeding season so the "young" birds have their first tail through their first nesting season. As that year goes by their is quite a bit of wear so this gets harder as time goes by. The shape of these feathers is easier to examine in the hand. One clue that your bird may be a male is the overall tone to the bird. There are some accounts that describe females as darker than males. This is true but misleading as in the total range of redpoll coloration the darkest males are as dark as the darkest females but the lighter colored birds are virtually all males. So the median (or mean) coloration of females is darker than males but it is entirely due to the truncation of the lighter end of variation. To my eye your bird looks quite light, more in the outside of female range. With the lack of breast pigmentation it is probably a young bird. So I'd say the odds are young male but this is based on two negative arguments rather than a diagnostic feature. If I had it in the hand I might make a stronger case.
The red cheeks occurs in females with some regularity. Indeed some (older) females can get a slight reddish wash to the breast as well.
BTW, if you have some shots of this bird showing the underside of the tail I'd be curious to see them.
Female Common Redpoll.
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