Love is in the air

[Jay Shah]

Blue throated bee eaters are busy making babies. I have been photographing this spices for a couple of years now, but this is the first time I happened to be at the right time, right place to witness and photograph this behavior. Their courtship is fascinating. Male brings a specially juicy bug. Passes over to the female. Then slowly slides closer..she gets lower..and then action....!!

Cropped for composition. PP in ACR and PSCC.

Comments/suggestions welcome.

Nikon D850, 600 mm f4
1/2000 s, f8, ISO 1250

[David Policansky]

Very nicely captures with good image quality. I think I would have put the perch and birds a bit lower in the frame.

[John Whaley]

Very nicely captures with good image quality. I think I would have put the perch and birds a bit lower in the frame.

Agree - wonderful image with a great timing, pose, background, focus, and good detail. I also would lower the perch in the frame, probably remove the obviously cut twig on the left and crop enough off the right to include the branch all the way out of the frame. For me the cut ends of the perch are detracting from the natural scene. You might consider a 3:2 crop here.

[Walker Noe]

I love this. These birds are great, awesome behavior, perch, and background. I agree with comments regarding composition and crop.

[Isaac Grant]

Super cool interaction. You have beautiful soft feather details as well as a lovely background. I am fine with the crop but agree 100% with cloning out the cut twig and cropping from the right to get rid of the other cut end. Also you need to lift the exposure at least half a stop. While you are at it I would reduce the greens in the whole shot you have a green cast to the shot. Very common in these low light types of shots.