My weeks of carrying my tripod through the woods and wetlands of Grand Isle, Louisiana during migration season yielded photos of 24 species of warblers and numerous other birds. You had to photograph the birds where you could find them; food and water are so plentiful that it is almost impossible to lure birds to open perches and the use of bird calls is prohibited on the Nature Conservancy property.
Nikon D2x
Nikon 500mm f/4
Nikkor teleconverter 14-TCE
ISO 320
Aperture f/5.6
Focal length 700mm
1/320s
EV -.33
Comments and critiques always welcome and appreciated.
Randy covered very well the main problems of the image. I agree that the bird is very sharp and the eye contact is fantastic. The green in the BG helps a lot to increase the contrast of th egolden plumage. You did a good job with the exposure. It is difficult to fix the problem with the tree in the BG but you can add more room to this crop to improve the result.
An area that I try to go after Warblers is very much like this area in your photo. It is very difficult to get that perfect BG without a setup. I don't mind the tight shot, you probably have other images that are not so close up. Nice detail, the BG isn't perfect but I appreciate the difficulty that went into this.