One from this evening wandering along the Farmoor reservoir causeway again, more of a record shot than for critique
I haven't seen many of these pipits before, but Farmoor reservoir is a fairly reliable site for wintering water pipits. There have been two overwintering pipit there, a rock pipit and this water pipit.
Note the very white wing bar, yellow lower bill, reddish legs as opposed to pinky straw in Mipit, the almost continous flank stripes,cleaner white underbelly extending to the vent region, the overall greyish tones rather than brown and the pinky buff tones to the breast. The eye stripe hasn't developed yet but the bird was starting a sub song of fine piping notes totally different to Mipit.
Oly E-3, 300 F2.8 plus 1.4tc, iso 400 1/1250s at F4, tripod and large crop. Jpeg file resized and sharpened in CS2
Unfortunately it is a huge crop, but has stood up well all things considered - the noisy background is a real giveaway of just how little of the original image is being presented. The Oly top pro lenses have incredible resolving power, the bird was at least 30' away........ so OK for web production but only a postage stamp print
The bird stands out a lot better in the repost. I like the muted colours. I think it is possible to get too hung up on dismissing a shot that has been cropped a lot. Most magazine pictures are not much bigger than this and I bet you would get a reasonable quality reproduction in most cases. I've certainly seen worse used. How many of even the best pictures ever end up as large as A4 in print? Eric
Discussion
9 repliesI haven't seen many of these pipits before, but Farmoor reservoir is a fairly reliable site for wintering water pipits. There have been two overwintering pipit there, a rock pipit and this water pipit.
Note the very white wing bar, yellow lower bill, reddish legs as opposed to pinky straw in Mipit, the almost continous flank stripes,cleaner white underbelly extending to the vent region, the overall greyish tones rather than brown and the pinky buff tones to the breast. The eye stripe hasn't developed yet but the bird was starting a sub song of fine piping notes totally different to Mipit.
Oly E-3, 300 F2.8 plus 1.4tc, iso 400 1/1250s at F4, tripod and large crop. Jpeg file resized and sharpened in CS2
A species not seen too often & I think it is a bit more than a record shot!
David
Very nice Water Pipit! I agree with David - it's more than a mere record shot!
Tim
Nice shot Mike , missed out on one of these last year.
Andy...
An bird that is not recorded to oftens.
Major.