Mountain Birding 3.0 - Bullock's Oriole male

[Brian Sump]

Found these bloomed trees at my new mountain honey hole and awaited the arrival of the natives. This handsome bugger came and perched nicely, albeit not quite perfectly. Early morning around 620am before sun crested over the east mountain.

Missed peak bloom on the flowers by a few days but I'll take it none-the-less.

**** If you tell me my bird is crunchy and give me no additional details, I will e-kick the crap out of your shins and then I will come at you through the screen like a spider monkey ****

:-)

D850
600mm + 1.4
HH
ISO 2000
1/400
f5.6

Post in C1P, PS and 15/15 DNAI. Did some bkg clean up where a bright sky was shining through. TK mids curves, NIK filter applied to bird, reduced bkg brightness.

[dankearl]

Bird looks great, excellent IQ, attractive flowers.
A lot going on, a nice habitat image but too many flowers for me......

[Randy Stout]

Brian:

No crunchy comments from me. Just nice D850 detail. Lovely fellow, yellows well handled, nice balance of light here.

Yes, some of the flowers are a bit wilted. The image is pretty busy, lots going on, but the bird is so strong that it is able to keep our attention.

Cheers

Randy

[Dorian Anderson]

A fine image. Technically spot on and perfectly representative of how the bird would appear until unbaited circumstances. It might have been nice to have a bit more DOF across the flowers, but I understand
that's hard when you're also battling to maintain subject isolation against other distraction. Shot works mostly because the bird is so brilliantly bright!

[Daniel Cadieux]

Details and sharpness look perfect here. Only my breakfast cereal was crunchy today. Anyhow, you remarked about the past-prime flowers, and I agree, but now that you know about the spot you can return earlier next spring! All else looks good to me

[Colin Driscoll]

Lovely shot. Nice framing and contrasting colors. Interesting that this is a wild shot because here in OZ those flowers (or similar) are only found in gardens.

BUT on my 200" 10k supercalibrated fragilistic monitor it is so crunchy that I can hear it!!
Ha ha, now come and get me

[Brian Sump]

Extreme shin kicks for Colin; a share in my Nigerian bank account for the rest of you.....

Dan - knew the busyness was a slight issue but my perspective matched yours in hopes the birds presence was strong enough to hold the image. Thank you.

Dorian - 100% agree. However the D850 caps at ISO 2000 and I was already at 1/400. Sun wasn't up and just didn't feel comfortable stopping down further. For sure next time...

Daniel - you also get a box of Captain Crunch Berries or Count Chocula, your choice. Heck yeah, next spring it's on!

[John Mack]

A beauty of a bird. Love that setting with the flowers.