White-throated Sparrow.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Man, it seems like all I've been getting this Spring are Sparrows!! That's OK, although the sparrow family is often referred to as "LBJ"s (little brown jobs), each species has it's own beauty and song. Here's a beautiul fresh plumaged male White-throated Sparrow that was called onto this perch using audio. It made a few landings, and I quickly noticed that when it landed pointing to the left (complete profile) an horizontal was best, but when it landed straight-on a vertical was best...so here I flipped the camera for an almost full-frame vertical image.

Canon 40D + 100-400L @400mm, aperture priority, evaluative metering, 1/1000s., f/6.3, ISO 200, -0.3 EC, natural light (getting harsh - see contrast on perch!), handheld.

[Seyed Babak Musavi]

What can i say , All thing in this shot is very good , well done

[Bruce Miller]

David,

This is a beauty! I use all the same stuff as you, except I can never get the birds to land on the perch. They land everywhere else but the perch...

[Randy Stout]

Daniel"

Beautiful exposure,sharp, nice eye and pose.
Pleasant background.
Interesting perch, lots of detail. Might consider burning in the lichen just a bit to reduce their eye pulling power.Like them, but find myself studying them, rather than the bird.

Nice!

Randy

[Jonathan Ashton]

Spot on - I think the colours and the detail are absolutely perfectomondo! Did you use Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen?

[Charlie VanTassel]

Excellent, Daniel. I'm impressed by the lack of any shading under the bird in this fairly bright light,and without the use of flash.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Hey Daniel, Nice to come back here and to see a post of your, loved the pose, nice perch and BG..

[Stu Bowie]

Hey Dan, the comp works so well here, and I like the angle of the sparrow. Just love the light and detail around the head, and super eye. The lichen certainly adds to the perch, and what a multi coloured BG. Well captured.

[James Salywoda]

Such a beautiful shot Daniel I really like the composition the mottled bg is really pretty.

[Grace Scalzo]

A beauty, Daniel. Fantastic looking bird, set up well against that background and nice perch.

[Joe Senzatimore]

This is a stunning looking sparrow. The Bg and the perch are perfect as is the composition.

[Declan Troy]

Hey Daniel,

As a big fan of sparrows, I say keep posting them as you are doing some great work with them.

As a bit of white-throat trivia let me note that this species comes in two morphs, some with white stripes (your image is a white stripe), some with tan stripes. Both sexes come in both morphs and they usually pair with birds of the alternate morph. There are several behavioral traits (and some chromosome polymorphisms) linked to these plumages, one being that white birds sing more than tan morphs to the extent that a white-stripe female may sing more than her tan-morph mate. Probably some joke about the band the Whitestripes here. A long way to say don't be too sure that your image is a male. BTW, most of the pioneering research on this species was done near you, in Algonquin PP.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Did you use Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen?

Jonathan, I use Unsharp Mask. One thing to note is that the perch looked oversharpened so I selectively sharpened the sparrow only.

Declan, thanks for the very informative reply. Quite Interesting! I knew the males and females looked alike but thought only the males sang their distinctive song (which this one did). Since you are such a sparrow fan (me too, BTW!), here is a link to a "tan striped" individual got the privilege to photograph at a feeder this past winter. Not sure if it was male or female though!:D

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=52397

[Ofer Levy]

Nice one! I especially like the composition.

[Bruce Miller]

Daniel,

Thanks.

[Harshad Barve]

what a beautiful image Daniel , I am loving every pixel of this image
TFS