Hairy Woodpecker

Gallery: AvianPosted March 9, 201092 views9 comments

Hairy Woodpecker (Dendrocopos villosus)

Over the past year I’ve posted several images of Hairy and Downy woodpeckers. I find them interesting and attractive birds. However, so many of my images of these birds show a “soft head” (likely motion blur). Recently my image of a Downy (which initially looked fine to me) was both soft in the head and without evidence of eyes (they have very dark eyes)! So, here’s another try. There were many of both types of woodpeckers around here today. This time it’s a Hairy image.

I look forward to your assessments.

EOS 7D, EF400mm f/5.6: ISO 500, f/8.0, 1/1000 s, image is 2390 x 3093 pixels =7.4 MP (41% of the 18 MP of the 7D).

Comments

9 comments

Comment posted by Monica Siri on March 9, 2010 at 4:40 PM

Steve,
excellent shot. The detail is really sharp everywhere in the bird and I especially like the strong feet with the toes clawing to the trunk and luminous eye.

Registered on September 20, 2009, 132 Posts, 3764 Comments

Comment posted by Philip Hodgkins on March 9, 2010 at 5:03 PM

Steve this is a solid woodpecker shot. The detail is good and I particularly like the feet and the catch light. Looking at the large image, it looks to me that the bg is a bit noisy, but not objectionably so. It is mostly confined to the OOF pine needles and dark branches. A light selective noise reduction might smooth out the bokeh, but that is very minor and certainly not a deal breaker.

Registered on July 24, 2006, 2741 Posts, 12349 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on March 9, 2010 at 5:51 PM

Nice, Steve. The head looks sharp to me and you got a pretty good catchlight. You might recrop this a bit to lower the bird in the frame, but that may just be my taste.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Ron Bielefeld on March 9, 2010 at 8:34 PM

Steve, this is very nice. Good angle and good light on this bird. Your exposure looks good as does the sharpness. Nice catchlight this time. I like the comp you chose putting the bird high in the frame. To me that is fitting for a woodpecker shot. Well done.

Registered on December 6, 2008, 360 Posts, 7132 Comments

Comment posted by Doug Backlund on March 9, 2010 at 8:54 PM

I don't know how they act where you live, but here, hairy woodpeckers are much warier than the downy. I rarely get very close to them. The bg leaves a little to be desired here, but the rest of the image is great!

Registered on September 29, 2005, 252 Posts, 3380 Comments

Comment posted by Dan Moore on March 9, 2010 at 10:31 PM

When I am around they like to stay on the dark side of the tree.
Good Catch!

Dan

Registered on February 11, 2010, 143 Posts, 1248 Comments

Comment posted by Brian Gatlin on March 9, 2010 at 10:49 PM

Steve, I think this looks good. The eye stands out much better, and for me that is critical. exposure, detail and comp all look good to me too. I can't seem to get a decent shot of these guys--they are always on the opposite side of the tree!

Registered on March 21, 2009, 202 Posts, 4187 Comments

Comment posted by Steve Balke on March 10, 2010 at 8:02 AM

Great! Thank you everyone. It certainly is encouraging to know that I'm making some progress. Looks like I need to pay more attention to selective NR though. In this case I selectively reduced noise in the background using Dfine 2.0 but I bet that I only selected blue using the control point technology! (great detective work, Philip!!) Re: shy Hairys. I agree, they are more shy than Downys. For this one, when I heard him, I stood behind a tree and let him come around. I was lucky that he was low on the tree. Too often, here they start high, go higher and then fly to another tree....leaving me looking up!

Registered on June 18, 2009, 229 Posts, 2915 Comments

Comment posted by Mia McPherson on March 12, 2010 at 7:59 AM

Steve,

This looks like a solid woodpecker shot to me. The only thing I might have done different is to have a little less space on the bottom and a little more on the top since woodpeckers normally move up a tree. I love the background and the light in thsi bird's eye.

Registered on June 25, 2007, 491 Posts, 12566 Comments