Yellow-headed Blackbird

[Dorian Anderson]

I'm just back from two weeks of birding in the deserted wilds of Northeastern California, and it's good to plug back into the board. Photographing in
areas I haven't previously visited is always a great challenge, so I was really happy to intersect a photogenic colony of Yellow-headed Blackbirds,
a new species for my photo collection, on the eastern side of the Sierras in Plumas County during my primary birding pursuit. I captured several
different images I will post over the next few days.

With both the bird and plant (sagebrush), restricted to the Western United States, I think this image is wonderfully representative of the Great
Basin the two species co-occupy. I had the detail to crop closer but wanted to show as much of the sage as possible, the super-striking bird able
to command attention even in smaller in the frame. The perch is natural (i.e. attached to a rooted bush), but I did pin down another distracting
branch/clump/projection to isolate this one to which this bird returned again and again.

Canon 600mm f/4 IS II on EOS 1DX2
1/3200 at f/7.1 ISO 1250
Processed in LR CC without trickery

[Bill Dix]

A beauty of a shot of a species I've yet to capture. Good choice to show a lot of the sage. I might be tempted to slightly tone down the highlights on the sage, even though not blown. Yellows and blacks exposed nicely. Clever idea to pin down an adjacent plant to restrict the landing zone.

[Jay Ing]

Glad you had a safe and enjoyable trip.
Never seen this one.

Love how the subject pops against the clean bkg.

Might be the natural color of the sagebrush - but wish is provided more contrast/darks to balance the darks of the bird high in frame.

TFT - nice one!

[Randy Stout]

Dorian:

They are a wonderfully photogenic species. Years ago one showed up in Michigan for a few weeks, and it was fun working him. No sage here however !

Nicely captured, but I do agree with Jay and Bill about toning down the sage brush a bit, or reducing the amount of it in the frame, or both. It might be one of those images were there are multiple got options on how to crop and compose, depending on exactly what you are prioritizing.

Sounds like you had a fun trip.

Cheers

Randy

[dankearl]

Great subject, hard to get in my area as they stay far out in the sloughs..
I am an Intermountain west refugee so I always appreciate sagebrush.
The brush looks fine to me, if you lower it too much, it would not look like sagebrush,
and that is a big feature here.

[Brian Sump]

Dorian, congrats on what seems like a great trip!

I am still trying to get used to such a long perch runway. Creatively I love what you did and I embrace it; the challenge is that the bird becomes so small in the image it's difficult to assess in itself and mildly drown out IMO. We have them all over in the marshes here and clung to a very thin cattail or reed helps the bird stand out as they're so thin.

Altogether, I'm sure the details on the bird are great and I do concur that a bit of muting on the plant could only help.

[Dorian Anderson]

All the comments are helpful, so thanks to everyone. Here is a revised version with some of the perch removed and what remains toned down a bit.
I don't want to push the crop or perch any more, so hopefully the changes are enough to satisfy the peanut gallery! Cheers!

[Bill Dix]

As a member of the peanut gallery, I actually liked the crop of the OP, The slight change to the highlights of the perch make a modest improvement to my eye while still looking like sage on a sunny day (if I can remember what that looks like).

[Brian Sump]

Only helped IMO Dorian but could go either way on perch amt. Well done

[John Mack]

Very nice framing. The yellow and green go great with one another. Nice pose and framing. I prefer the original.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hey Dorian, I am going to be different. I liked your original framing and post. On my display all looked good. The only change I might try is there are a couple dark areas on the dark feathers that I think could be opened up but that would take local selective editing. Thank you for sharing.

[Volkan Akgul]

Hi Dorian, difficult colors. congratulations

[Daniel Cadieux]

It's always fun to chalk-up a new species for the files! Good on you to recognize the bird's repeating behaviour and then adapting the scene for a better result. The subtle toning down of the sage does work better IMO. Very appealing overall!

[arash_hazeghi]

looks pretty much perfect I would just tame the yellow channel that seems a bit hot, I like either crop

beautiful image

TFS