Male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at Nest.

[Daniel Cadieux]

The unrelenting begging of the chicks lead me to the discovery of this nest, wow, talk abut non-stop! It took a while to pin-point the location due to the thick forest habitat. I did not visually see the nestlings, and by the time I could return to the site a week later they had already fledged. This was the only good angle available, and viewed through a "keyhole", hence the framing by foreground oof branches.

Canon 7DII + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC III, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/400s., f/5.6, ISO 1600, natural light, handheld, small crop to help the composition, darkened the pupil, lightened the iris, warmed up the image a tad to rid a bluish cast.

[John Mack]

Like the composition here and the key hole framing with the out of focus leaves. Really looks like it was taken in the forest.

[arash_hazeghi]

pretty cool Dan, you worked well with a narrow angle, would be tempted to get rid of the thin branches in the LLH

TFS

[Alex Becker]

Nice one Daniel -- I like the eye, pose, and framing of the bird with the OOF leaves. Ditto Arash's comment on cloning the OOF branches.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Difficult shot to get judging by the surrounding leaves etc. The image looks a little cold to me but the bird looks well detailed.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys! Yes, those branches in LLC did tempt me...I'll likely create a version with those out.