A Sad Tale/Tail

[PhilCook]

Southern Emu-wren...male

One very cold and bleak morning about 2 weeks back, I was 200klms from home on a windswept stretch of lagoon. I tried in vain for a few hours to locate these very timid little birds in the low saltbush...then gave up in futility
.
Then as I was driving off 3 of them ran down the middle of the dirt track, so spent another hour or so snapping away as many images as possible using playback as a lure and got lucky along with the sun peeking out from behind the clouds temporarily.

This little Wren species has a very long filament of a tail, 4 or 5 times the length of it's body. I have lots of pix with tail attached...but this one oddly enough was missing his, no idea why ?....so thought I'd post this up initially....kinda figured he looked cute in a fuzz ball sort of way without the tail.

Canon 7D + 500f4 + 1.4 x TC....700mm, f6.3, 1/1600, ISO 640, Manual exposure, no flash, tripod mounted.....cropped, selective sharpen and noise reduction

[Satish Ranadive]

Phil,
Feel bad about his tail, still superb image with beautiful IQ.
I like the pose with nice HA, lovely colors, nice details,perch and composition.

Regards,
Satish.

[Greg Oakley]

Excellent capture Phil - nice pose and perch. Pity about the tail - with it, this would have been awesome!

[MohsenVahedipour]

Very cute indeed Phil. Very lovely perch, pose & BG.

[Karl Egressy]

Nice little guy even without the tail. Nice pose and great details, Phil.

[John Chardine]

Hi Phil- what a great bird, tail or not! Perhaps it was a food item for some predator and dropped it's tail feathers in an escape. Do they retain the long streamers in the winter?

Nice backdrop to the bird. The perch is busy but not much you can do. The throat and eye-line look distinctly bluish-grey on my monitor is that the way it should be?

[Grace Scalzo]

Sweet little bird. You created a nice image of him. The crop is a bit much for my taste as the feathers look a bit crunchy, maybe loosen it up just a bit?

[Bill Dix]

Cute little fuzzball indeed. Great detail around the eye, and a nice pose and BG. I also see some bluish cast at the throat. Looking forward to seeing one with the tail streamer.

[gail bisson]

A sweet little bird.
I do miss seeing the tail but can appreciate you showing us something different!
I see a blue cast under his throat.
I find this a tad oversharpened as well.
I really like the perch and the BG.
Maybe reduce the brightness a bit?
Looking forward to seeing the guy with the tail!!
gail

[PhilCook]

Hi Phil- what a great bird, tail or not! Perhaps it was a food item for some predator and dropped it's tail feathers in an escape. Do they retain the long streamers in the winter?

Nice backdrop to the bird. The perch is busy but not much you can do. The throat and eye-line look distinctly bluish-grey on my monitor is that the way it should be?

The blue-grey is natural as is, probably a brighter blue in peak breeding season or duller light. Not sure if they drop their tails out of breeding season, I dont think so and the breeding season should be starting within the next 2 months or so.

[David Salem]

What a cute little feather ball he is. Nice pose and eye contact. I like the red in the eye too. I think the whole scene looks a little bright on my monitor but that should be an easy fix. Cant wait to see one with the long tail.