Tb photoshoot : Birds 1

As promised, I want to share with you some of my good bird photos. It's not always easy to get close enough to have them in fullest possible screen, so I have to zoom and then in post-production, edit levels, contrast, saturation, brightness, and crop the image to focus as much as I can on my bird subjects. 


I'll start with my favorite species, the black bird. I find them funny, quirky and I love their overall demeanor of cheeky, yet cautious way of hoping and stopping to make sure they aren't followed. They are not easy to photograph up-close, but on occasion, remain still long and close enough to get nice results. 

This is a male blackbird. The female are greyer and look duller, as often is the case in birds. 

Another very common bird to see, probably one of the most common in the world, is the sparrow. This is a female common sparrow. It was difficult to shoot and I had only a tiny time to do so, where the sun was quite bright behind, so I had to edit to lower it, which results in this not-totally clear photo, but probably one of my best, as she stands on this rock by a pond in our local park. It's close enough that I can go back and try this with my Fuji camera, as this was shot with my old Sony. 

This is a blue tit. Their name is funny, just as are their cautious and curious stares. If am not mistaken, this is a male and he was quite high up on a tree. I had to crop and edited levels, and reduced slightly the lightness of the blue sky. 

I had initially identified this is a female redstart (scientific : Phoenicurus ochruros) but I'm not sure. It's one out of several photos in the same shoot day, but I never managed other photos of it as the rare times I ran into this bird again, I didn't carry my camera. Some birds have different kinds of generations with different looks in varied ages, much like some butterflies. Maybe this is still a redstart, but wiki doesn't show the various stages and I might have found that in some book. 

As far as I know, this bird, which I found on a tree in my mum's garden one day, is a male European greenfinch (= Carduelis chloris). It was rather high up and I never ran into this kind again, so I only have photos from one shoot in this case as well. You notice that I cropped both pics quite heavily, especially this one. 

White wagtails (Motacilla alba) are most common near rivers and water sources, so I rarely see them in my town. This was shot during a trip to Vichy, actually, and I had to be quick as it was across me, for only a short time. It's an adult male. As it moved and me too, the tail half disappeared in the motion, but I still like the result, and it's the clearest of my photos of it that day, and any other opportunity was even worse, as I saw them on grass in very bright conditions. I haven't been able to edit them to offer a proper view as of yet. 

I'm not sure which kind of finches these are, I'll have to study.