Canon 7D Canon 500mm f4 L IS tripod, ISO 320 1/500 sec f6.3
This is a chick - day 1. Usually the first meals are feathers from the body of the adults. The primary theories for this practice are that the feathers are slow to digest and accumulate at the gastro oesophageal junction this means any material is retained in the stomach for "longer" periods so if parasties were ingested then they would have more time to be deactivated by stomach acids and equally any fish bones would have more opportunity to be equally digested and therefore not become lodged in the gastro intestinal tract.
Love the pose, and the chick with the feather on Mom's back. Overall though, I find the image rather fussy, with some difficulty finding a real point of interest. I wonder if a less tight crop, extending the canvas to the left, sharpening and lightening the adult grebe, and blurring or removing some of the shadows in the background would help.
The behaviour captured here is very nice, and along with the accompanying text it serves as a nice ornithological lesson. I love the markings on baby grebes, and we have a good look at it here. Artistically, the image could use some sprucing up. Subject seems dark overall, and the eye and face of the adult shaded. Comp is quite tight below...perhaps there were some distracting elements just out of view? I imagine a lower angle was not possible? There is also a perception of a tilt to the image - giving it some CCW rotation could be good. Sharp as posted, and your timing on the feather exchange was perfect.
Thanks for the feedback, I agree entirely the image could be a bit brighter, trouble is I had taken so many similar images with varying exposures, I reckon I began to lose patience. I have also noticed particularly with these grebe shots just how much the perceptive images colours vary when producuing images in daylight as opposed to when using tungsten light, something I think we are all aware of - but perhaps not just aware over how much the colours and brightness can vary.
The image is pretty much full frame and it was taken from a small viaduct, water level images of this nest are impossible without disturbing the birds.
Thanks again for the C&C - much appreciated.