Virginia rail

[Bob Kothenbeutel]

I had to wait quite a while for this one to come out into the open. The scattered grass along the shore made it hard to get a totally clear shot.

Canon 5D2
500mm f4L IS
ISO 800, f8, 1/500 sec

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The soft light, sharpness and eye contact look very good. If it were mine, I would be tempted to remove the blade of grass that is in front of the bird's body and the one parallel to the neck.

[Stu Bowie]

Super pose, sharp, and I like the colour of the Rail. If anything, I would remove the grass alongside the neck.

[Scott Frye]

I really like that red eye -- grasses don't bother me much as I see the rail in habitat

[Gal Shon]

Eye contact, habitat and soft light makes it for me with this one.
I would place the bird a bit more to the left.

[Fabs Forns]

Very nice capture in great colors and definition. I'm with Axel on getting rid of those two weeds if it's OK with your post processing ethics. Light was very nice too.

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent sharpness and very fine detail is the signature of 5D2 in the right hands! agree with carefully removing the weeds. TFS

[Bob Kothenbeutel]

Thanks for all of your comments. I seriously considered removing the two blades of grass in question (and I still may) but at the time I decided that it would be unnatural to get an image of one of these birds with no obstruction whatsoever. If I get some time I will work it over and see what happens.
Bob

[adrian dancy]

Excellent ...nice head turn and what a great looking bird!

[Arthur Morris]

I do not mind the aforementioned grasses at all; you did a good job of choosing the best perspective. The grasses that bug me are the light-toned somewhat horizontal ones. Soft light, sharp, good EXP, and suitable head angle.

[Bob Kothenbeutel]

Image reprocessed. I removed some grass blades based on many of your comments and this cleaned up the image. Sorry that the original posted image is gone. I replaced it on my website with the new one (didn't want both images on my website)
Bob

[Arthur Morris]

In the future please simply upload the repost into a new pane. The three grasses that I mentioned above are still there and are still much more distracting than the ones that you removed. Nice job though. :)