Just squeaking in on the last day! This is an immature Heerman's, which are all black (as opposed to the white and gray adults with their garnet red bills), on the cliffs at La Jolla. There wasn't much done on the photograph to optimize it, just some minor ground clean-up and a slight lightening around the bird's eye.
7D mkII
100-400 IS II zoom at about 320mm, hand held
1/500 @ f/6.3, ISO 800
ACR/Photoshop
I think you handled this one very well Jake. You have a nice stately pose with great eye contact and head angle. Details look nice. OK so the birder in me has a question. Is the color of this bird as presented accurate? Young Heerman's Gulls are a little more of a chocolatey brown than this. Although it does look like it is starting to replace some of its juvenile feathers so that could be adding to my confusion.
Thank you! As far as the colouration goes, he looks the same as I remember seeing him, though as always I could be wrong. I recall that they were more black than brown, though not a dark midnight black like you'd get with a raven.
Theme: Immature Heerman's gull, low-perspective vertical
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