Still digging through old files on a rainy day. This little Pine Warbler was very vocal, especially when I used a bit of audio to entice him onto a lower branch. The species has blurry streaking on its sides, but this guy looks especially blotchy. Molting? Or perhaps the mottled lighting coming through the branches? Taken in upstate New York in May of 2016.
Nice flash use. Good pose, like the framing effect of the pine needles, excellent eye.
Some of the feather details appear a bit smeared. I thought about subject movement as an issue because of the relatively slow shutter speed, but the eye and bill seem reasonably sharp. Did the original file have this effect.?
Thanks Randy. Looking back at the RAW file, some of that smeared look seems to be present in a few spots. But there was some mottled shadow falling on the bird in that area that I attempted to brighten. I don't know why that would have caused it (unless I used the Clone tool, which I don't recall), but it's possible this was the result of the processing.
Pose and framing are nice, but the bird is very, very crunchy, particularly the face. It looks like it has been processed to death, for lack of a better word......