Goosey Goosey...

I rarely go out with a target species in mind, and yesterday I went out for “Birds in flight”. I got sidetracked chatting to a bird watcher and ended up in a hide overlooking the lake. Brilliant day, with a male goosander preening for about twenty minutes just 30 metres away, and later he and two females hauled out on to the ice about fifty metres away for five minutes or so. Here is one of the resulting shots – you may get some more later.

Nikon D300 with Nikon 600/F4. 1000 sec at F6.3. ISO 400 EV 0. Rested on window ledge in the hide. Cropped to about 70% of original, and at this resolution the water droplets on her front are sadly not noticeable.

Hi Mike, nice light on this goosander too. bonus with the wing stretch and icy water.


Mark.G

Hi Mike, nice shot with great lighting.

I must admit to being disappointed with this shot when uploaded to web. The original is sharp and very detailed, but when I tried to sharpen the low res version it looked awful. Hopefully the male will be better.

Lovely light and pose here. I always find it difficult to sharpen for web, I try to use tiny increments and several passes, but it's a difficult balance! This shot looks spot on in terms of sharpness to me though.

This looks really good and I can see that a larger version would work really well with all those droplets. Nicely composed

Hi Mike,

Very nice! Detail looks good and lovely winter light. Looking forward to seeing the male.

Cheers,

Lewis.

Lovely bird, the line between ice and water adds greatly to the image, great stuff

Paul Hobson
www.paulhobson.co.uk