Red-necked Avocet

[Glenn Pure]

An Australian endemic. I liked the water drop from that wonderful bill. This is a fairly hard crop that retains about 40% of the original 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 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/1250 sec, f7.1, ISO 1250. 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) after final size reduction.

[Randy Stout]

Glenn:

A great bill indeed, with the drop just right. Good POV, whites well exposed,.

Although I generally like to include some background in an image when possible, I think this band is so high in the frame, that I would recrop and try a version without it.

It would have been neat if you had time to zoom in a bit closer on this guy, to reduce the crop needed.

Cheers

Randy

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Glenn, great low perspective, and well exposed on all three colours on this fellow. Before reading Randy's comment, I would have also mentioned that removing the darker band at the top of the frame wont harm the image. I could also see a version with some taken off the bottom. The falling droplet takes this up a few notches. Well captured.

[Glenn Pure]

Thanks Randy and Stu. Yes, I think this could work quite well as a pano with the band at the top removed and a bit off the bottom.

It would have been neat if you had time to zoom in a bit closer on this guy, to reduce the crop needed.

That was an error in the capture details, which I've now fixed. Sorry. I should be more careful when I cut and paste from earlier posts.

[Noel Heustis]

Glenn - that bird is awesome! I too like the water droplet coming off the bill. I would remove the oof mosquito or fly or whatever the tiny little black dot to the left of his rump, as well as the white dot in the BG between his legs. Also, I'd be back out there trying to find more of these to photograph! Those are cool looking birds. Thanks for sharing.

[Glenn Pure]

Glenn - that bird is awesome! I too like the water droplet coming off the bill. I would remove the oof mosquito or fly or whatever the tiny little black dot to the left of his rump, as well as the white dot in the BG between his legs. Also, I'd be back out there trying to find more of these to photograph! Those are cool looking birds. Thanks for sharing.

Fair point on those minor distractions. While I avoid cloning usually for ethical reasons, in those cases, it is not impacting the integrity of the scene and so agree I should remove them.

As for visiting again, I have only ever been to that site once before (although these birds are reasonably common and found elsewhere, I've never seen them in other places myself). The location was the Western Treatment Plant to the west of Australia's second largest city: Melbourne. It is a massive 10,000 hectare (22,000 acre) sewage treatment facility on the shores of Port Phillip Bay, with dozens of ponds and has been there for a hundred years or more. It is such an important site for waterbirds that it is a Ramsar listed wetland of international significance. The whole thing is under lock and key but it's possible to get a key and permit to visit the site, which many thousands of birders have done. During a recent visit to Melbourne, I was fortunate to be taken there by several friends in Melbourne who have keys and permits. So sadly, I won't be back there any time soon.