This is the time to take pictures of singing Blackbirds.
They come abot two weeks earlier than the female to establish a breeding territory.
Taken at a little marsh just outside of Guelph, where I live.
Canon 50D
Canon 500 F 4.0 L IS
plus 1.4x TC
Hand held
ISO 320
1/800 sec
f 5.6
exp comp + 1 1/3
They just showed here and I noticed some are not strutting yet and lack very bright colors. I know that will change soon and probably in just a few days if it would warm a bit.
I have just seen a few till today and looking out at a feeder by the front fence there is probably 50 male and female making a raid.
Well done and yes it is time to start imaging them. :)
We do not have any yet that I have found. We still have a lot of frozen ponds and lakes. I do like these birds and they make great subjects. I like the details in the blacks and the exposure seems OK.
A very handsome bird, nice plumage. On my monitor, there didn't seem to be a lot of detail in the red, so I checked in NX2, and the jpeg does show some blown highlights in the red channel. Might I suggest desatting the reds a few points, might bring back a bit of detail, and make the image even better.
I agree with Randy's assessment on the epaulette. The deepest blacks seems a little washed out and there is a colour cast on the bird (a little on the reddish side). In the repost below I reset the black point in Levels and this has fixed both of these issues in one shot (would do a better job on some of the now blocked blacks with a full size file, but this gives you an idea...). Harsh light didn't help you here. I do like the pose. and the typical perch for these guys :-)
Cute pose with the beak open. My first impression was that it was an over flashed image. The re post is better, but it still looks a bit harsh. Must have been less than ideal light.
Red-winged Blackbird
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