Black-crowned night heron (juvenile)

[Craig Brelsford]

A juvenile black-crowned night heron floats by at the Elephant Hill rookery in Jiangxi, China earlier this week. Black-crowneds and three species of egret are congregating in their hundreds at the rookery. Many eggs have been laid, and there is still much sparring and mating going on. In the coming weeks the chicks will hatch, grow, and fledge, another exciting spectacle.

Device: Nikon D3S
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal Length: 850mm
Aperture: F/7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/3200
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: -0.33
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 2000
Subject Distance: 28.2 m
Photoshoppery: Noise reduction on OOF BG. Sharpening. Parts of two egrets, very much out of focus and very brightly white and distracting, were removed right and bottom. I used content-aware fill.

[Stu Bowie]

Nicely separated from the BG Craig, and only wish the wings were fully up or down. Seems like you have some exciting times coming up there, and hope you have access to get some images of the chicks when they hatch. Cheers.

[Mike Milicia]

Excellent detail and good flight angle but would also prefer wings more up or more down.
That would also eliminate/hide the shadow on the body.

[Martha Weaver]

Nice sharp detail. Ditto comments above. I like the way you've given him distance to fly into. I like space ahead of things when available

[Arthur Morris]

EXP good and the image is relatively sharp. Good job on losing the egrets!

There are however, many problems including some that have not been mentioned above :)

The light sticks in the BKGR are distracting. The bird's head is angled slightly away (at least from the line of the body if not from us.) A pretty large crop from below is needed. Lastly, your images from this location lack color punch and contrast--they look like Kodachrome 64 if anyone remembers that :)

[Dan Avelon]

nice and sharp, the only thing that I don't quite like is the wing positions.