Mashed Breakfast

[Stu Bowie]

I visited my favourite location last sunday, Pilanesberg National Park, and although not expecting much activity, I did manage to capture some images of my favourite species. This female Pied Kingfisher has just caught her breakfast ( 6.17am ) and was busy bashing it against the perch to soften up before swallowing. The perches around the hide all have the fossilised look to them. Since they close their nictitating membrane when bashing against the perch, I have replaced the eye. I also felt a central placement of the KF worked best.

Canon 50D
100-400 @ 400mm
1/2500
F/6.3
ISO 640

Exp Comp 0
Hand held from a hide.

[Dumay de Boulle]

Very nice col and exp. I like the eye work...What was the action like! I am missing my Bird Photography!

[Ofer Levy]

Excellent action and behaviour shot! Awesome sharpness and detail, sweet BG, balanced composition and nice perch. The behaviour is captured beautifully - excellent!

[Melissa Groo]

Stunning in every way, Stuart. What a cool pose and excellent sharpness and wonderful behavior captured! Great call on the comp too.

[Randy Stout]

Stuart:

Tremendous pose with great sense of action from it. Sharp and well exposed.

Crop as posted works well, image does lend itself to a variety of crop options.

Good job on the eye. Loons often close their eyes when doing wing flaps, always frustrating when an otherwise fine image is let down by the closed eye.

Cheers

Randy

[Stu Bowie]

Thank you all for the kind words. I should have posted the unedited eye initially with my post. Here is a small unedited version showing the closed nictitating membrane.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Excellent image. Love the crop and BG. Neat action pose too. Great job on the eye...some may argue it is better to leave the nictitating membrane intact to preserve the natural way of things, but artistically your reworked eye is much better and I would have done the same.

[Karl Egressy]

Cool action shot, Stuart. Great work on the eye.

[arash_hazeghi]

fantastic Stu, killer pose and light, very dynamic! congrats

[Jim Crosswell]

Great action image Stuart! Excellent eye repair and BG.

[Stu Bowie]

Thank you all for the kind words. Always appreciated.