Burrowing Owl Chick Breakfast: Frog's Legs

[Melissa Groo]

Canon 1D4
500mm +1.4x
Gitzo/Wimberley

1/2000 sec
ISO 800
f/7.1

Cheryl Molennor and I were photographing burrowing owl chicks in Cape Coral, FL early one morning a week or so ago, and were delighted as we watched a parent walk a few yards away from the nest, recover a frog corpse covered with dirt nearby and bring it back to the nest. One lucky chick immediately claimed it, without contesting from the others, and we watched him walk away from the others and work on it for quite a while. I liked this because although I got oodles of cute chick shots, I thought this was something different, and showed more of their, well, savage side.
Wish I could see the owlet's other foot, but not much you can do when it's obscured by grass. I liked the spots of flowers in the grass here and there.
Some crop, NR, slight sharpen, and slight darkening of greens in the BG.
Thank you for looking. All C & C greatly welcomed and appreciated.

[Satish Ranadive]

Fabulous image of cute little one in habitat. Beautiful composition. Loved the pose and expression of chick .

[Randy Stout]

Melissa:

Unique action, interesting story, good shooting angle, sharp. I like the comp.

To my eye it has a green cast. I tweaked the cast a bit in Color Efex Pro (87% white neutralizer filter)

Just an option.

Cheers

Randy

[arash_hazeghi]

very cool Melissa! spicy frog leg snacks!

[Frank Schauf]

Great pose and setting you have here.

[Ofer Levy]

What a cool image!!! LOVE it! Both versions look good to me.

[Dumay de Boulle]

Lovely stuff Melissa..The colors, light and shooing angle are fantastic

[Arno Ellmer]

Very interesting behavioral shot ,Melissa and extremely well captured.I love the low angle.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Melissa, great low perspective, and an opportunity well used. I like how you have captured the chick 'holding' the frog's leg, and good DOF on the chick too. I like what Randy has done to the image.

[gail bisson]

Hi Melissa,
Great to see you back from Florida and posting some images from the trip.
I think this shot is really fun and unusual. The foot holding "the foot "is priceless! I like Randy's version as it addresses the color issue. Great low POV. I would be tempted to clone out the one tall OOF weed that is a quarter of the way in the frame on the left. I, too, like the 5 little flowers in a row. Well done,
Gail

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Girl... You beat me to the punch errr... foot. LOL I got the same exact frame but after lot's of observation I think you had a better angle showing more eye and so now I am throwing you in the mud next time we shoot together. Oh but wait you will probably already be in the mud Heee. That was fun and we were very lucky to catch that moment. You did great with this and have to laugh that this image stuck out for me too out of all the frog legs. After seeing the repost I do see a green cast on the OP and I like that he brightened the eye too. Awesome shot girl and I am happy you took home some winners.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Awesome! Action puts it over the top but great job isolating that BG too......not an easy task!

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Melissa, what a moment. wonderful. I like the subtle changes done by Randy. low angle, light, exposure, details, composition...you covered everything. Well done.