Indigo Bunting

[Bill Dix]

While we were enjoying the flock of Bobolinks last night, this lovely Indigo Bunting decided to join the party. After a little audio coaxing he came down out of the treetops, but took forever to land on an open perch. Shots of him in the shadows didn't look so vivid, but in the light of the late afternoon sun he looked practically neon. (It's no wonder his technical name is Passerina cyanea.) In fact, I toned down the yellow channel a bit; and I added a bit of black to neutrals overall, and more black to the cyan channel. Cloned out several clipped ends of twigs, that I had removed to give him a landing zone. Background is grassland in the sun at 7:30 PM.

D7000, 700mm, ISO 1250, 1/500s @ f/7.1 manual, fill @ -1.7 EV. Auto WB.

[Karl Egressy]

Beautiful image, Bill. I like this pose with a slightly tilted head of any songbird. Very nice background as well. IQ looks great. The only not so good part of the image is the perch.
Maybe a little bit of trimming off of the branches would be a good idea.

[Bill Dix]

Beautiful image, Bill. I like this pose with a slightly tilted head of any songbird. Very nice background as well. IQ looks great. The only not so good part of the image is the perch.
Maybe a little bit of trimming off of the branches would be a good idea.

Thanks Karl. There was another perch, a live Redcedar branch just above this dead one, that I had chosen for him. I willed him to land on it, but he refused. I did a bit of cleanup on this one, but could do some more.

[Ian Wilson]

Beautiful work Bill, gorgeous bird, technically spot on. I think the only twig I would remove is the short one that protrudes upwards just above the top edge of the branch - it catches my eye. Cheers, Ian

[Satish Ranadive]

Fabulous image of beautiful bird on nice background. Love the colors and details.

Regards,
Satish.

[gail bisson]

Beautiful bird with a sweet pose and nice BG.
Nice to see a hint of catchlight.
Gail

[keith mitchell]

Hey Bill it would be nice if they would sit just where you would like them but they have a nasty habit of sitting where it pleases them, it's a beautiful little bird sharp and detailed, it certainly fits the bill for me.

Keith.

[vishaljadhav]

Nice image
IQ is fantastic and BG is lovely

[Shawn Zierman]

Man they are a brilliant looking bird. This one still has some mighty fine plumage condition for this time of year...Perch looks just fine to me...I would not have guessed that you pruned the perch prior to the image, so nice job managing things in post. Super light quality.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks everyone. Here's a version with a little more cleanup on the perch. I suppose it does concentrate the eye more on the bird.

Shawn, this is his good side. He is definitely showing some molt. I tried, on another image of him, to paint in some blue over the molting spots, but on this one I left him as is.

[Sridatta Chegu]

I really like his "Now what?" pose. Great details and lovely colors. RP looks better!

[Geoffrey Montagu]

A beauty, Bill. Like the head tilt pose. It's interesting that the lower bill is markedly lighter, grayish, on the Indigo. Very nice detail. I went out yesterday looking for the male Bobolink we saw the other day, and two INBU showed up and performed a duet. It's taken four years for me to finally see the Indigo Bunting, and now to see how unafraid they are, I'm expecting a lens landing.



Geoffrey

[Daniel Cadieux]

Love this species. Glad it sort of cooperated for. Good pose overall (I personally prefer without a downward tilt to the head) and good colours. We can indeed see the molt just starting in spots, but still looking snazzy. I prefer the perch on the original.

[Binu John]

Beautiful shot with nice colors and feather details! It's not at all easy to get these guys on an open perch and get a clean BG like this! Well done!

[Petros Petrou]

Very nice image of a very cool bird species. The head angle is less than perfect but the BG, light and details are. Very good job on perch clean up.