Brown Creeper.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Not the most glamorous subject or photo, but this species is most often difficult to photograph due to it being rather elusive...and perpetually in motion when found. Rather than climbing downward like a nuthatch, the Brown Creeper climbs upwards...spiralling up tree trunks until it decides to fly to the bottom of another tree and start again. Luckily this one has been frequenting a suet feeder this winter so it has been more accommodating than usual for photography. The creeper was about a foot off the ground, with the BG being snow.

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/400s., f/5.6, ISO 800 (settings histogram checked), natural light, handheld, cropped for composition (70% FF), enhanced the faint catchlight that was present.

[Grace Scalzo]

Wonderful, simple color palette which invites study of the image. My comments have to do with the tree....I might crop about 1/2 inch off the top (the white part of the trunk) as my eye keeps wanting to creep up to that bright spot and exit the frame. And there is a diagonal line in the lower right corner, perhaps a cloning remant? An easy fix. Most impressive sharpness at 1/400.

[adrian dancy]

Very similar in appearance to our tree creepers with the same behaviour. A difficult bird to nail. You did well.
I am in agreement with all of Grace's observation.
Just out of curiosity, the bark has become stripped around the circumference at bill level, do you know the cause? Is this some kind of birch tree?

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Superb exposure and details Dan. I like it a lot. TFS.

[MohsenVahedipour]

Excellent IQ & composition. Very well exposed. TFS

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hello Daniel, beautiful little bird nicely shown. I am with Grace regarding the white area at the top right of the frame. If mine I would try cloning some of the darker detail of the tree bark into the white area adjusting the opacity until just right.

[Marina Scarr]

Killer details in your feathers, Daniel. I see what others mean about the top of the tree but feel it might be too much of a crop to remove it.

[Holger Leyrer]

Wonderful image. The color palette works very good. Great details and nice pose

[Karl Egressy]

Nice image of a very difficult to shoot bird, Daniel.

[Enrique Patino]

All great Daniel, very nice image. The only think I find a little distracting is the amount of OOF tree trunk... but dont know how that could be avoided... or if it is just me... ;)