Baillon's Crake

[Glenn Pure]

This species also occurs in Europe, Africa and Asia so may be familiar to some in BPN. I photographed this one at the 'Crake Pond' at Melbourne's Western Treatment Plant (a Ramsar-listed wetland) on a recent visit. These birds forage among the reeds and rushes and don't often come into the open. I was fortunate to get some good opportunities during my visit. Apologies for the slanted rush leaf over the bird as some may not like it but I've left it. These birds are quite tiny. The crop retains about a third of the frame area.

As always, 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 1/640 sec, f6.3, ISO 1600. 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.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Works for me. Most times busy habitats are a distractions, while sometimes they are great at depicting where the bird lives. This one is such for me. I really love the two claws over the reed, very neat detail. Perhaps a bit oversharpened on the chest/shoulder area, but great job giving us an intimate view of this secretive bird.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Glenn, good low shooting angle, and I like the angled pose from the Crake too. I like that big round saucer of an eye, and although you were probably too close to have him in the full DOF, the focus is in the right place. Sometimes images have too many distractions and we curse, other times it is empty thus looking bland, and we are not happy. We sometimes have to show their habitat and you have done so here.

[John Mack]

Great detail on the bird. Really like that red eye. Nice environmental image here.

[William Dickson]

Very well captured. The BG makes for a 'natural' looking image. I like the pose and feather detail, which looks slightly over sharpened on my monitor. Lovely POV and HA. They look similar to our Water Rails, which are real difficult to see, never mind getting close. So well done on getting this image.

Nice one Glenn

Will

[John Rowell]

I like this as a habitat image, the green leaves frame the crake nicely. The red eye pulls me right in, with great IQ in the right spot. The right foot up on the leaf is a good bonus. A nice low POV helped you get a fine image here.

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you all for your comments. Some have suggested this is over-sharpened or at least looks that way. I have not done anything different here to my other images. It may be that I could back off on the contrast to reduce the over-sharpened look but certainly nothing pushed here.