Female pyrrhuloxia

[Jake Levin]

I thought this was a cardinal...the beak says I was wrong! The difference is how the upper and lower mandible fit together: cardinals have two triangular mandibles that come together in more or less a straight line, while the pyrrhuloxia has a pronounced downward curve where the beak closes. This female was the first to visit our setup the morning I was there photographing, and you can really see why people who would rather not pronounce the bird's formal name go with "desert cardinal". The male northern cardinal and pyrrhuloxia are easily distinguishable from each other, but the females are much more similar. The light was cloudless sunrise conditions and it created a notable colour cast, so I reduced the yellows in the image and did shadow/highlight adjustments until it looked more or less as I remember it.


7D mkII, 500mm f/4 IS, tripod mounted at a perch/feeder setup
1/800 @ f/7.1, ISO 800
DPP converted
Photoshop processed: square crop, a tiny bit of background work, eye work to remove double catchlight, colour/exposure correction and lowered overall contrast on the perch and bird. NR via neat image.

Thanks for C&C'ing,
Jake

[arash_hazeghi]

Sweet pose, light BG and a good perch too. the image is a bit too bright on my screen and the details look a touch course and crunchy perhaps from processing

TFS

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

I agree Image is too bright for me. Might be worth a second look at processing on the same.

TFS

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Jake, lovely inquisitive pose, and I like the raised crest. Although the perch is fairly large, it is interesting. Before reading the other comments, I felt the bird is over sharpened.

[Jake Levin]

Something happened in the jpg conversion. I agree there seems to be too much sharpening on the details, but I'm not sure why, since the raw file looks ok and I don't recall doing anything to bring out the feathers. Maybe my unsharp mask settings were too strong. Here's a rework with a curves and unsharp mask adjustment.

[John Mack]

Cool looking bird and i like the crop. The pose is nice as well.

[annmpacheco]

Hey Jake, she's a beauty and a big improvement on your repost. Lovely BG, interesting perch, and that tilt of her head is sweet. Always a favorite bird to photograph when i am in Texas.

[William Dickson]

Hi Jake. Lovely looking frame and what a great looking perch. A lovely BG with nice detail on the bird. I would say something between the OP and the repost for max quality. Very well done.

Will

[Arthur Morris]

Neat bird but the repost still looks too bright and too crunchy. I never apply a Contrast Mask to the whole bird, just to the eye and the face. Best to re-visit the RAW file ...

with love, artie