Magpie

[Jonathan Ashton]

Canon 7D Canon 100-400 L IS ISO 400 1/1250 sec f6.3.
Shot taken from a hide in the back garden, I am hoping to get a shot of the magpie in flight as it approaches the post which has been baited with fat and peanuts.

All C & C welcome.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice clean BG here Jonathan...I like that you exposed all the darks well and also showed the iridescence of the plumage despite the seemingly overcast conditions...
I wonder if f6.3 was enough here as the head seems a bit softer than the wing?

[arash_hazeghi]

Very nice pose and iridescent colors and a nice BG. I wish for a better perch and I agree with Morkel the critical focus is on the wing.

[dankearl]

One of my favorite birds, they don't live where I live now, but grew up with them.
I would just loosen the crop if you can, the focus would probably look fine and a bit more room at the top
would look better for me.
Nice colors.

[Ron Sprunger]

You've done a great job with exposure. Magpies are extremely difficult for me, with the pure white, deep black, and iridescence. It also looks smaller than our magpies. I agree that a little extra sharpening on the head would be helpful, but I like the pose and BG. In my experience that perch is about as good as it's likely to get for a magpie -- I seem to get the choice of fence post, lawn, or dense brush. You might consider relieving the specular highlight on the beak, and maybe the fine white specks in the feathers below the eye.

[adrian dancy]

I am not sure I can agree with the above and with a low res image it may be difficult to tell...but the feathers on the bird's thoat look very sharp to me. I find head detail is often very difficult to pull out of this species giving the illusion of softness.

Was this taken on a windy day?

I do agree that the perch is not the best but all in all not a bad image.