These silky-smooth birds are such a joy to watch as they gather en masse to strip ornamental fruiting trees of their berries. The sights and sounds are unforgettable, especially when observing a flock of 400-500 birds - most at about eye level or lower! Tough to isolate one individual, but with so many it's just a matter of time some get pushed to the edges of the trees for good stuff.
Canon 7DII + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC III, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/400s., f/5.6, ISO1600, natural light, handheld, FF, eye work (the reflection in it was wonky), minor lower mandible clean-up.
The processing on these is awesome. Super soft and smooth, just like they are in person. Like that the perch is even with the camera all the way across, keeping it IF.
Another strong bkg. While I normally love some alternate color in the frame (which the berries provide), these might be just a touch large for my taste. Hard to complain here though really.
Hi Dan, I like your composition with the crabbies danglin front and center and the beautiful waxwing. Very nice feather detail and the steely gray BG really highlights the colors on both the bird and the fruit.
Hi Dan ... the subject is priceless good !!!!
Personally I prefer this cooler presentation compared to previous posting ... matter of taste ... without knowing the light situation at time of shooting .
To me the berries are very dominant and somehow take more attraction than needed .... IMHO
Beautiful bird and image, but I agree about the berries being distracting. I can't figure out the focus or scale, for example. The berry should be much smaller than the bird's head, right? Here they appear very close in size. It's almost like the berries are much closer
than the bird, but I'm not sure how you got them and the face in focus if that's the case. This is the sort of confusion this image is causing me!
It is funny about the comments on the berries. I was originally going to suggest removing the two right above the head because they are rather dominant, but thought I was being too picky!