Marsh Wren

For some reason, certainly not having to do with the quality of the song, this is one of my favorite songbirds.  I was watching this one working building a nest at Ridgefield NWR this morning.  Gaps in the cattails that gave a clear shot were few and far between, but it finally chose to sing in an area that was almost unobstructed.  There was a bright oof cattail head just above the bird in the original that I chose to clone out.

The routine the nest builder followed, consisted of a three step process.  It would go down to the ground and get a thoroughly soaked (and thus pliable) grass blade or reasonable facsimile, take it up to the nest area and use it to lace down a cattail leaf where  it was wanted, then go gather some cattail fluff and stuff it in somewhere. The series was then repeated.  (Note-the males build the nests in this species, typically many more than it has mates).

7D2, Sigma 150-600 C @ 562 mm, beanbag in car window, f/6.3, 1/2000, iso 640, aperture priority, pattern metering, -1/3 EV.  Processed in LR5 & CS6.  Cropped to 10.4 MP is a 4x5 format before resizing.  Sharpened bird, slightly increased exposure on the bird and slightly decreased the exposure on the bg to help the bird pop a bit more in this pretty monochrome image.  Taken at 8:26 AM this morning at Ridgefield NWR.

Your comments and criticisms are always appreciated.

Thanks,