Female Red Winged Blackbird

[Alex Becker]

Hi all,

Here's a female Red Winged Blackbird who was hanging around the male blackbird I posted a couple days ago from NJ taken at around 8am or so. I've been wanting a shot like this (of really any smaller bird taking off) for a while so I was pretty happy to get this with a relatively clean perch and BG, although I do note that the bottom wing position could and ideally would be better. In post, I did some tonal adjustments, some light noise reduction on the bird and heavier on the background, sharpened. I also selectively toned down some highlights on the branch and removed some very small parts of the perch from the edges of the crop (about 30%). Catchlight is natural.

Camera: Nikon D500
Lens: 200-500mm f/5.6 at 500mm
Specs: 1/2000 ISO 2000 f/9

Thanks for looking!
Alex