Satin Bowerbird

[Glenn Pure]

An immature male bird practicing his bower dance with bower in background. Each pose is usually maintained for a few seconds at a time while the bird tries to stay as motionless as possible - greatly helping with photos as a low shutter speed is usually needed as the bower is under bushes. This is one of the commonly seen poses with the bird's plumage flattened down, eye almost popping out and the body arched over towards the ground. I'm lucky enough to have these birds in my back garden where they spend many hours each day at the bower. I have so many photos now, I don't know what to do with them all. This image is about half the frame area.

Thank you for taking a look and any comments you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/200 sec, f7.1, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR applied to bird and stronger to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur: 0.3 pixels at 40%) after final size reduction.

[John Mack]

Crazy eye on this bird too neat. I've never seen or heard of one. The composition might be a little too tight on the bottom. Nice and sharp.

[Bill Dix]

Amazing to have these guys in your garden. Razor sharp, and that eye is fabulous. Would love to see a frame with the whole bird posing.

[Isaac Grant]

Love me some Satin Bowerbirds. I was amazed at how common and how tame they were. You have a really nice look at this female. Details look very nice. That eye is ridiculous! I do find the background a bit distracting and wish it was separated more from the bird. Also I wish the birds head angle was a few degrees facing us as opposed to away.

[William Dickson]

Fabulous. Beautiful detail on the bird and the eye looks awesome. To me, the bower in the BG is a big part of the image, and I like the DOF. If mine I would remove the brightest part of the bush, the oof one, to our left of the birds head. Well done Glenn.

Will

[Glenn Pure]

Much appreciate your comments John, Bill, Isaac and Will. I was aware a tight crop like this might not appeal to all, also the busy bower in the background. But that's the life of these birds for much of day. I will post some other shots showing the whole bird at some point but all will show the bower environment.

Love me some Satin Bowerbirds. I was amazed at how common and how tame they were. You have a really nice look at this female.

Isaac, you might have missed the OP text: this is a male. How can I be sure even though immature males look a lot like females? This one was doing a bower dance and females, as far as I know, don't do that. They stand in the bower and observe the male. More critically, the males develop a pale beak as they get older. Given the paleness of the beak on this one, I'd say he was getting close to developing his adult black plumage which happens at between 5 and 7 years of age for this species.