Alert Stonechat

[Richard Unsworth]

Captured this morning; like his alertness!

Canon 7D 100-400 Manual Exp, nr, SMARTSHARP 100,0.5
CROP about 70 of original

[Grace Scalzo]

Richard, the background is just beautiful. I'm not crazy about the perch and the fact that part of his tail is blocked. The feather detail looks odd to me....I suspect from cropping and then oversharpening? The beak and head do not look perfectly in focus. If it were mine, I'd examine the head at 100% and if it is indeed in focus, rework the image with a looser crop and refine the sharpening.

[Richard Unsworth]

OK thx Grace

The transitional plumage alwats seems a little weird to me and hard to get right.
I have changed format, applied nr to bg only and resharpened, may still be a little crunchy lol
thank you for your comment, always appreciated

[Grace Scalzo]

Richard, this looks really nice to me now. I hope that some others comment too...I don't always trust what I'm seeing as it's hard to guess at what steps people have applied when processing. I could consider burning the bright spot on the right side of the perch to keep all attention focused on the bird.

[Richard Unsworth]

Thanks Grace, burn easy will do. That facial disc always seems to look fuzzy, I am not sure why.
Luckily these are common in the yard. They are however not easy as they are dead flighty!

[Satish Ranadive]

Beautiful image of beautiful bird. Agree with about plumage of the bird.
I like the details,very nice colors and details.

Regards,
Satish.