Southern Carmine Bee-eater #3

[Bill Dix]

Here's another from Botswana. This one perched nicely for us, as did many of them. Note that the colors of this one, taken around 8:30 am, seem to be brighter/redder than the two prior posts in flight. Maybe the light?

D500, Sigma 150-600C @ 600mm; ISO 800, 1/3200s @ f/7.1 manual; HH.

[gail bisson]

Hi Bill,
As soon as I opened this I thought that the colors were much more in keeping with my experience with these birds.
What a great perch that creates a perfect comp. I could see a version with a sliver off the top. Terrific BG.
I never saw them on nice perches -so you did well.
No nits from me.
Gail

[Isaac Grant]

That sure is a fantastic looking bird. I have never seen this species and really want to some day. You did really well with them. Rock star flight images and this is a really nice image of it perched. Love the perch it chose for you. Details looks nice. I think your choice of crop is good but brings up an issue I am often faced with. For some stubborn reason I typically like to stay with the chosen sizes like 8 x 10, etc. If you kept with that crop then you would lose too much on the sides when you were taking room off of the top. So I often choose to leave a bit more room over having an unconventional crop. No right or wrong but it is something that I often face. Had that issue on a perched Evening Grosbeak that I recently posted.

[Tim Foltz]

Bill, Beautiful bird, wonderful shot, nice details, colors and BG and as Gail stated maybe a bit off the top.

-Tim

[Glenn Pure]

Bill, really lovely work: great pose, great light, great perch, great background. What more could you want. That pink/red is really striking and contrasts so wonderfully with the greenish blue parts. A bird I wish I'd seen when in Botswana but only got the Little Bee-eaters.

[David Salem]

Well you literally killed these bee eaters.
Beautiful perch and background and you have lovely colors and details on this one.
Like I mentioned on the flight image I would pump up the colors a bit on those ones to get a little closer to this one. Well done

[Dorian Anderson]

Stunning image! Only thing I might suggest is cropping a bit off the top. That part of the frame's feels a bit empty as is.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Bill, what a lovely proud pose. Colours look good here, and I like the curved perch and clean BG.

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all.