Rufous-tail Jacamar

[susanschermer]

Costa Rica: To my surprise this beautiful little bird flew down from his shaded perch in La Selva Biological Station to bathe himself in the soft dirt on the road. He rolled around in the dust for longer than I stayed around on my belly taking photos. My guess is that the dust helped remove any insects or parasites.
Mark III, 400 f/4 DO lens
ISO 800, f 5.6, 1/500

[Morkel Erasmus]

lovely bird and great behaviour captured Susan. colours and exposure look good, I would just rotate the image slightly to get the in focus line of dirt leveled, and also maybe add some selective sharpening to the head and beak.

[Phil Ertel]

Hi Susan,

A lovely bird with a nice pose providing good eye contact. The slightly open bill adds interest in my opinion. I like the low angle of capture. Your exposure looks pretty good and the image appears sharp with good details in the feathers. The simple setting displays this colorful bird very nicely.

Below are some suggestions based on my personal preferences. They are not necessarily better than your presentation but, are just offered as an alternative presentation.

1)The bird appear just a little dark to me. I would selectively lighten areas of the bird in an attempt to show off the the colors even more.
2) I would crop some of the out of focus foreground.
3) If your ethics allow:

a) I would even out the color/tones at the top edge of the image.
b) I would clean-up the bill a little.
c) I would do some "eye doctor" adjustments; mainly to reduce the catch-lights.

I hope you don't mind but to demonstrate my suggestions I attempted to make these adjustments in photoshop. Again, not necessarily better just something to consider based on personal taste.

Thanks for sharing this lovely image.

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

Susan
Timing is everything. I've only ever seen them high up in the trees
Great pose and HA.
I find the colors in the repost too light and don't reflect true colors of the bird, but do think removing the darker elements in foreground and dackground would help the image
Thanks for sharing