marsh wren

[Dave Slaughter]

Taken earlier this year, in a typical pose.
Canon xti
400mm f 5.6 lens 1.4x tele-extender
ISO 400
f5.6
1/400

[Lance Peters]

Love the singing pose and the BG and the HA.
looks a bit soft on my monitor - a bit more sharpening??
I would think about removing the end of the perch that is sticking out the birds back.

:)

[carole wiley]

A wee bit more sharpening and removal of the stick coming out of his back and this is a winner. Some might like a bit more of a head turn but I like this.

[Gail Spitler]

Dave
I like this very much. Looks terrific. The stick out of the back is part of the cattail, I think? It looks quite natural to me.
Gail

[Julie Kenward]

It's a very nice composition and BG and I love that you got this little one singing away to its heart's content. What I am not so fond of is the blurry quality of the overall bird. I would suggest more sharpening but I don't think that's going to help as it appears to be camera shake and that's pretty hard to fix in post-processing. Another culprit could be the aperture you chose - it might be just a tad bit shallow for the bird as you got the mouth in sharp focus but little else.

As for the "stick" above the bird, I'd lose it. It doesn't add anything to the composition and tends to cut the bird in half visually.

[Dave Slaughter]

That actually is not a stick, it's the top portion of the cattail and I think losing it would make the photo seem unreal to any marsh rats among us. These birds are hard to make appear sharp because their plumage is blended, but I don't think the tele-extender helped this image. Thanks for the comments.