Unlucky Yellow-rumped Warbler

[John Whaley]

A Merlin with what I think is left of a Yellow-rumped Warbler. I have other frames with yellow feathers in the air. Unfortunately I had poor light here but can never pass up a raptor with prey. About a 50% crop and basic edits in LR. Nr and sharpended in PS. 1/1600, f6.3, auto ISO 1000, +1ev, 500 f4 E + 1.4III, D850.

Attachment 174397

[William Dickson]

Hi John. Lovely pose you have on the bird and the prey adds. Nice detail on the bird and perch. I like the BG colours. The poor light shows, but I wouldn't pass up on this one either. I would crop some from the top.

Will

[Stu Bowie]

Hi John, you have a great angled pose here, and great that your Merlin has a meal. The bits of feather in the beak adds interest, and I agree about taking some off the top. There is a bit of noise visible.

[Isaac Grant]

Sweet pose, perch and prey item. A great opportunity for sure. I think you could revisit the bird and apply a touch of NR to clean up what is visible which should be an easy fix. Curious was this from a car or you were on foot?

[John Whaley]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Issac - This image was taken from the best blind ever invented, the passenger window of my F-150. I always try to get an image from the vehicle if I can because I find all wildlife, especially raptors, less wary of vehicles than humans. I am not sure why but it seems like when I see something interesting it is usually out the passenger side so I rigged up a tripod in the passenger seat with a BH-55 ball head. It makes shooting from the passenger side less of a yoga workout than it used to be.

[gail bisson]

Hi John,
This image is very cool and you captured a great moment of behavior.
I agree with your self critique re: the light but still a nice image.
I would redo in PP to get rid of the noise on the bird if you can. In hindsight I think you should have been shooting at a higher ISO to increase overall exposure.
Gail

[David Salem]

Fantastic that you found a Merlin with a bird in its feet and landed on a perfect perch too.
The image look pretty nice With decent details but the main problem is it's pretty noisy. I'm kind of surprised that it's this noisy with only 1000 ISO with that 850. Not gonna be easy to remove the noise and retain all the feather details. Maybe a little wider composition and some noise reduction on the bird. Either way a great capture.

[Dorian Anderson]

Cool image. Agree a slightly tighter crop might work. Not sure what that would do to the noise levels though.

[John Whaley]

Thank you for the feedback. I went back in the history and used a higher Neat Image setting on both the subject and the background. Resharpened with the smart sharpen filter and cropped the image a bit more. Hopefully improved.

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