Ceyx azureus

[greg cowle]

The azure kingfisher is the second smallest in KF in Australia, distinguished by its orange underparts and violet sheen. This I believe is the smallest race, rufficollaris, found only in the far north, which has a deeper rufous-buff with more extensive blue-violet along the sided of breast and flanks, per Morcombe. Like the Little Kingfisher it has only 3 toes. The pale tip of the bill indicates it is not fully mature, the bill will grow a bit - these have the longest bill length to body ratio of the Aussie KF's. Would have been nice to have some light and a colorful background, but it was in the intertidal region of the mangroves with a very low tide.
Canon 600mm 1/400, f4, ISO6400. Techs are a compromise for HH in a little rocking boat.

[gail bisson]

Great little bird. I saw these when in Port Douglas on a boat trip and can visualize perfectly the conditions you faced.
The bird is sharp.
The eye has the usual "rainforest" pattern on the pupil but I am OK with that because that is the habitat they live in.
Some of the rufous feathers on the shoulder have a pink hue to them. Is this correct?
I would clone out the branch coming down from the top of the frame or simply crop it out if you have enough pixels.
I would also do another round of NR on BG.
I would be glad to have this in my files because I dipped completely re: getting a shot of them!
Gail

[Aditya Sridhar]

I agree 100% with Gail's critique. Nice shot!

[dankearl]

Good comments by Gail.
I would also just smooth out the vertical branches on the left.
Nice work.

[Colin Driscoll]

You've caught a good pose here, tough little fellows to photograph. Certainly at least remove that bit of branch at the top, and maybe the one crossing the top LH corner. The others don't bother me so much. Nice shot.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hey Greg, beautiful bird, nicely shown. I ditto all the previous comments. Thank you for sharing.

[greg cowle]

Thanks all for the comments, I can go back to the background as it seems to be a consensus.
Gail, the pink or violet on the shoulder is characteristic of this northern race, it is different from the blue and yellow southern race bird which is more photographed. I spent a lot of time on the color here, aware that I was photographing in blue shadowed light, and conscious not to have a violet or magenta cast. But that pink/violet on the shoulder is real. I bumped into a local photographer on Mt Lewis today, and looking at her book, if anything I toned the color down there too much...

[gail bisson]

Thanks Greg for the info on the pink. Always fun to learn something new! I did see them in PD but just not close enough to see this pink on the shoulder.