Little Blue Heron Double Dipping

Caught this Little Blue Heron stuffing it's mouth with bream. There is a small bream at the back of his mouth and he went back for seconds. The heron must have a bunch of chicks nearby.

You may remember the large group of herons/egrets that I posted last week. The shot made "Earth Shots"of the day- http://www.earthshots.org/2009/06/egrets-fishing-by-mike-hall/. There are many pics on this forum that would make it too. Check it out. All the birds have gone except for about 30 to 40 birds. This morning I hid out in the place where all those birds had gathered and all I got was this "smurf" looking bird.

ISO 400, 1/40th, 500mm, F6.3, Slight crop.... very early morning (dark) conditions

Good catch Mike. Smurf looking is right, I got a chuckle out of that.

Just weeks ago I didn't know these existed until Daniel Loomis posted one. That's one of the best parts about this forum. Discovery! Then I happened upon a small group of them while watching Great Egrets. Now when I see them, my first thought is that " here come the smurf birds"! They are so different with that color scheme. Very unique bird! I'm thinking about waiting them out again Friday morning. Each trip I get closer and closer. One landed 10 yards from me this morning and the camera was pointed the wrong direction. Try again!

Here's another from this morning. I guess he had a itch!

Nice shot, I like the color and "smurf" bird is right on track. Great catch to get the bird with its beak full with 2 meals!

Smurf ... I'm still chuckling about that moniker for this guy. I had completely forgotten about smurf's but now that you've drug up that vision I'll probably have a dream about them tonight!

Yes, Smurf is a hoot. Got a good moniker for the green heron?

Very nice action shot. However, colors looks a little too Smurfy to me. I have not seen any Little Blues with coloring quite that bright. Neck and head are usually a bluish-purple with duller blue body. Of course there can be a lot of color variation within a species depending on locale, diet, general health, etc. Most of the LBs I have shot were in South Louisiana.

Your second shot is more like I am used to seeing, but a bit duller perhaps.

Your post said it was dark at time; did you use flash-fill to brighten things up a bit? What was your white balance setting?

Daniel, It looks like I went overboard on saturation, but he/she was blue. I did shoot on the wrong white balance, I was on sun and should have been on cloudy. The light was changing fast and I didn't need to make any excess movement (camera settings) in fear of spooking the bird. I did change the contrast/brightness, and saturation of 15. I shot in JPG and in RAW, but I'm currently in a Photoshop issue and having to use "Elements". My computer had crashed last week along with my bootleg copy of CS3 and I don't have the copy to CS3 that I was using.

Here is the original and the finished steps that I used.

One of the problems with blues in bird photography is that there is not actually a blue pigment in the feathers. It is all a matter of refracted light and that can get messy. Capturing it properly is always a bit subjective. Thanks for showing us your workflow.

That is quite the double dipping Mark!

Daniel: looks like Mark and I should have some fun this week - he's kind enough to oblige me when I head down to Central AR - probably twice if all goes well. I am really looking forward to capturing some images of the LBH...