Superb Lyrebird (male)

[Glenn Pure]

My first post in quite a while as I've been busy with other things and will be away again later this week. Anyway, this is a shot I took down our 'bush block' at the south coast of NSW where we have resident lyrebirds. I have been trying for several years to get a decent shot of one. They are the hardest birds to photograph as they live in relatively dense scrub and, being ground dwellers, are always wary. This one appeared (with two others) just above our bush shack. Fortunately, I was able to use our parked car as a blind to sneak up and managed to get quite close. The bird spent quite a long time preening and singing in relatively open situations and provided a great show for us. The light was terrible though as it was late in the day and drizzling lightly. So I had to use the car as a rest for the lens and push my luck with the ISO and shutter speed. I took lots of frames and hoped a few would be OK. The best shot I've managed yet but I live in hope of better one day. Shot is essentially full frame.

Thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 200mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/80 sec, f6.3, ISO 3200. 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 to bird and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur: 0.6 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.

[Dorian Anderson]

Great story and result. Some species just won't ever come out, but you did really nicely with this guy. There's enough distance to background that he still pops nicely.

[gail bisson]

This guy looks like he has been "ridden hard and put to bed wet"! I am not familiar with this bird but wonder if his tail feathers are moulting as one feather looks beautiful on the tail.
Nice and sharp.
I would crop some off the RHS and I think it would be worthwhile to clone out the branch that looks like a semi-circle (in front of the bird).
Again, I am not familiar with this bird but I wonder if increasing the warm balance would improve the image.
TFS this interesting bird.
Gail

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Glenn, what a lovely pose, and perched high on the burnt stump. Good DOF on this guy, nice and sharp, and I like the tail. With a few more colourful tail feathers, he could become a peacock. Most times we have to take where our subjects perch, so Im fine here, as it shows his environment. I would take up on removing that circular branch as I feel it would improve the BG in that area a lot.

[Isaac Grant]

Love these birds. Considering the difficulties you faced you did pretty well here. Bird is looks good for that ISO as well so very nice job and helped greatly by not having to crop. Background isn't ideal but not a deal breaker for me either.

It is funny how some species are just really difficult and become a bit of nemesis birds. On my only trip to Australia we had very good luck with this species. We saw a pair at Royal National Park just off of the path and they were displaying and calling in an open area. I also saw one really well and out in the open somewhere in the Blue Mountains. Of course this was way before I had a camera. I'm sure if I had a camera with me I wouldn't have had nearly as good of views

[Glenn Pure]

Many thanks for your comments Dorian, Gail, Stu and Isaac. In particular, thanks for the thoughts on cloning out some of the many 'distractions'. While I generally avoid cloning, I will give this some thought. In this case, I also had no idea where I might start anyway. Also the thoughts on crop are helpful, Gail. I think the colour is fairly close though so won't revisit that. As for birds and cameras, I do wonder sometimes if they have inbuilt camera detectors in their vision systems that make them fly off, disappear behind obstructions or turn away whenever a camera is pointed their way!

BTW, I forgot to mention I captured a video of one a few years back performing. Not the finest quality but it is a remarkable thing to watch. Don't forget to turn the sound on: the most important bit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9GaXvOlNn0

[Isaac Grant]

Excellent video. They just are amazing birds and were high on my list of birds I needed to see in Australia. They are just one of the amazing species in Australia. In fact there really are 4 birds that people not from Australia all know. The Lyrebird, Emu, Laughing Kookaburra (we did see Blue-winged as well) and Eastern Whipbird (most don't actually know what those look like or even that they exist but that call is played in so many movies and soundtracks that they sound is something that people will immediately know).

[Gerhard Weldhagen]

Classic Lyrebird habitat, I would not clone anything here. Well done getting one out in the open.

Cheers

Gerhard

[annmpacheco]

Hi Glenn, I wouldnt change a thing, you were lucky to get this and what a fabulous bird. Also watched your video, classic and what a treasure! TFS