Falcon

[Ed Vatza]

Image made this morning at Forsythe NWR in Brigantine, NJ.

I've gone back and forth on whether this is a Peregrine or a Merlin and finally decided on Peregrine. But it wouldn't take much for me to switch back to Merlin.

Canon 50D; 300mm f/2.8L IS lens w/2x TC; Blubb-mounted

1/2000 sec @ f/5.6; ISO 400; 0 EV; Sunny WB

[Ramon M. Casares]

Light angle is not idal and I would suggest to tone down the perch a bit, fill flash would've been a good call here IMO. Also, some crop from top would improve comp.
Nice species, pose, colors and specially BG. Congratulations!

[Dave Mills]

Hi Ed, I once got a glimpse of a far away Merlin down there. Merlins are a small raptor so the size could be telling...

[John Haig]

Pretty sure it's a merlin. Nice image regardless. Like the background and pose.

[Dave Brown]

I agree with Ramon's advice,especially regarding the perch.My instincts tell me this is a Merlin.if you post to the id forum I can go into more detail.

Dave Brown

[Dr.Pranay Rao Juvvadi]

Like the light, perch and the relaxed pose of the bird. This is a Merlin. Note the wing tips falling well short of the tail-tip; the wing-tips of peregrines go right up to the tail-tip.

[Ed Vatza]

Appreciate the feedback folks. I kept bouncing back and forth between Merlin and Peregrine. It would figure that I would settle in on the wrong choice!

Anyway regarding the crop, I did already crop this image fairly heavily and didn't (don't) feel comfortable cropping any more.

However, I did select the perch and backed off a bit on the exposure. Maybe I could have backed off a little more. I'm not sure.