Cardinal bathing

[Ivan Ellison]

Another from my recent trip to NYC. Although they are quite confiding when feeding and sitting out on branches only saw two of them drinking/bathing. Both birds were quite secretive and doing it in out of the way places with plenty of twigs and overhead branches in the way- possibly due to the relatively high number of raptors in such a small area.
Few twigs cloned out and cropped to approx. 40% of original image. Darkened slightly and sharpened twice around the head only.

Canon 1D mkIV
Canon 100-400 @ 400mm
1/800 sec
f6.3
iso 800

[Alan Murphy]

An intimate image although a little busy. Water needs a CW rotation and the bird could use another round of sharpening.

[Daniel Cadieux]

We do not see this species pictured bathing very often, how cool is that! I love the reds and browns. I agree with Alan, and also too bad about the foreground clump of leaves in lower left corner.