Eastern Kingbird

[gail bisson]

Taken at our cottage in Ingonish yesterday.
Canon 1D MK IV
F 4.0 500mm and 1.4X converter
ISO 800
SS 1/4000
f 5.6
Taken on tripod at ~ 5:00PM. I took about 200 shots before I got this one that was sharp with a good head angle. Kingbird was hunting bugs from the same perch so I had several opportunities to try and get him on takeoff. I call it "flight school for dummies".
My thumb has " delete-itis".
Cropped by 40% and added a bit of canvas on the bottom. I used fill aware for the first time and I am quite pleased with the results.
Comments and critiques always learned from and appreciated with thanks,
Gail
Should I keep the little mites(?) on forehead above the eye?

[arash_hazeghi]

splendid.
I offer you a cocktail for getting this one. right on money
my only suggestion is to run a very gentle round of NR on the BG to smoothen the bokeh a touch.

[Randy Stout]

Gail:

Congrats on the lauch shot. Not easy to capture (seems to me I have a few thousand OOF scrub jay shots from Florida!)

Great wing extension, slight angle towards us, exposure, BG. Agree with Arash about BG, just smooth it a smidge.

I would remove the white spots, since you can't tell what they are.

Good job on the canvas extension.

Cheers

Randy

[Colin Knight]

Very nice Gail! Worth the wait. Thanks for sharing. I like the inclusion of the perch!

[Doug Brown]

Well done Gail! You need cat-like reflexes to pull off a shot like that. Meow!!!

[dankearl]

Gail, first off, congrats on the image of the week a few weeks ago, and now you probably have another.
Excellent in all aspects.

[J van Noordwyk]

A verry good TO shot on this quick birdie, so nice with the perch still in the frame well done Gail
Johan.

[Satish Ranadive]

Great flight pose. Very sweet image.

[christopher galeski]

good shot,nice flight pose,like that BG,its like marble.well done.

[gail bisson]

Thank you all for your comments! I will smmoth the BG in my master file and get rid of white mites.
Doug- You made me laugh with the "meow" comment.
Dan- I didn't know I had IOTW so thanks for telling me! My first time in Avian and only possible because of all that the BPN members have taught me,

Gail

[Karl Egressy]

Excellent timing and great pose, Gail.

[Ofer Levy]

An impressive shot! Great pose and sharp. 1/4000 was a very good choice!

[Frank Schauf]

Really nice flight shot and great details.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Gail, great timing for the take off, and what a fantastic wing position. I like the colours on both the kingbird and BG, and Im glad you left a bit of the perch.

[Kiran Poonacha]

This is beautiful Gail, nice pose and details. the BG adds well.

[Raymond Lee]

Great capture! Not an easy one. Nice that you include the perch.

[Daniel Cadieux]

WTG Gail!! This looks fantastic. I too would remove the three spots above the eye. Super well done, and please take care of that sore thumb :-)

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Like it very much, I'm with Randy about cloning the mites, is hard to tell what they really are. I would prefer a 3:2 crop since I feel there is too much space around.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Nice job Gail. Love the wings and great detail.

[rajojomanik]

Wow, that is very nice Gail. It's tough enough getting these guys on static but flight shots are something else.

You've done really well on this shot.