Great Tit, aka "Captain Beaky"

[Jonathan Ashton]

Canon 50D Canon 100-400 L IS ISO 800 1/250 sec f5.6 fill in flash -1.66 EV
I noticed this unusual Great Tit in the garden so I determined to get a shot of him. That really is a some beak eh?

All C & C welcome.

[Mital Patel]

Wonderful shot and sad to have abnormal increased beak. had seen one in field sometime ago in india where a Great tit had totally deformed upper mandible absent.

wish they survive smoothly

[Daniel Cadieux]

Jonathan, what have you been feeding your garden birds??? Good techs, perch, and beautiful BG. I do wish for a better HA, but excellent document image of this oddity.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks for the comments, hope to get a better shot of him, he has been around for some time now. He looks a bit like one of the Muppets - was it Gonzo?

[Jonathan Ashton]

Dan your wish is my command: I popped outside again and got lucky. You will notice the twig on the right? I tried a couple of ways of re-cropping the image but whatever way I needed to elongate the twig. I initially tried Content Aware but that resulted in a falsely stretched branch and leaves. I ended up cloning but I am not entirely happy. Perhaps I should have used a harder clone tool? Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Jonathan, what an amazing capture, and to visit your garden. Im sure he will return. I do like the overall setting, berries and all.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Much better pose on the repost, perfect HA. Re: branch...zoom wider! If you composed too tight but realized too late then you can point your lens a little to the right and take another photo of the bare perch to get yourself some source material to add canvas to the original image. Not always automatic to think "digital" in the field though!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Much better pose on the repost, perfect HA. Re: branch...zoom wider! If you composed too tight but realized too late then you can point your lens a little to the right and take another photo of the bare perch to get yourself some source material to add canvas to the original image. Not always automatic to think "digital" in the field though!

Not possible - the feeder was there and it is very nearly full frame.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I like both/ The perch is so nice and the ha on repost is definantely better

[Jonathan Ashton]

Just realised, the simple way to overcome the problem on the perch would have been to take an image of the perch without the feeder first, then superimpose part of this image as a layer. .......better still get it right in the first place!!

[Raul Padilla]

i like more the second post, but the bill is not great to see