The Whimbrel (not Curlew - thanks Michael) was struggling with dead fish for 20 minutes on the Gambian beach. Finally successfully took the only piece of meat which was interested in and leave the fish alone. Your comments are welcome.
Nikon D200, Nikkor AF-S 300/4, 1/1250s, F 8, ISO 400
Beautiful image of this snacking curlew, Petr. Bird is tack sharp, with nice colouring of the feathers. Like the background, but would clean up the brighter elements in the foreground. Might also consider cloning out what I believe are specular highlights in the bill, and a touch of CW rotation. Well done.
Nice feeding bahaviour! Love the pose, you can really sense the pulling and tugging effort. Nice to see a shorebird feeding on something different. Great low angle too! I'm not convinced it needs CW rotation, but the illusion is there with the slanted FG (all of the OOF BG looks straight). I agree with Jory about cleaning some of the brighter elements on the beach, and also the half-circle object between the feet.
Love the shot, the low angle is great with the items in front out of focus. Love the background. Not sure about removing any objects - I think it all adds to the drama of the shot. One thing I might ask - are we looking at a Whimbrel rather than a curlew. The dark strips on the head are very pronounced and much more so that any Curlews in this part of the world
Last edited by Michael Hogan; 04-15-2010 at 02:21 PM.
Michael: You are absolutely right! It is Whimbrel. I am still fighting with English names. Both are "koliha" in Czech language. This is smaller one (koliha malá) = Whimbrel. :-)
Curlew struggle
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