Mere Sands Wood

[Wildieswife]

The nature reserve a couple of miles away from where I live. With the Minolta 300mm

Male Reed Buntings





A Tree Sparrow



Continued……….

[Wildieswife]

……………


A Mallard that decided to fly up on a feeder to eat the seed.



The reeds through a garden ornament (with my 17-50mm f2.8 Tamron)



One of the Chilly Meres



Pat

[pakodominguez]

Male Reed Buntings

R U Looking at me?

Nice...

[Greg Beetham]

Well done Pat, normally the first two would probably be LBJ's that wiz by, good thing, there are now two less in the world, nice photos, the naughty Mallard as well.
Greg
ps. I think the duck at 12 o'clock is iced in.

[mvanrheenen]

/me is jealous...

I seem to be in a loop with my comments of your shots, but again these are beautiful images and subjects you've captured! One small thing though, could it be you've overdone the Sharness slider a bit with the mallard image? Their is some distinct noise visible in the lighter parts of the plumage. Good tight shot though!

We had a coot frozen stuck in the canal in front of our officebuilding last wednesday. One of my collegue's noticed it and called the animal ambulance service thinking they wouldn't actually respond to his call. In about half an our the ambulance, firedepartment and police were out and rescueed the coot. That was truly brilliant!

Mark

[Wildieswife]

Thankyou for the kind comments

One small thing though, could it be you've overdone the Sharness slider a bit with the mallard image? Their is some distinct noise visible in the lighter parts of the plumage.
We had a coot frozen stuck in the canal in front of our officebuilding last wednesday. One of my collegue's noticed it and called the animal ambulance service thinking they wouldn't actually respond to his call. In about half an our the ambulance, firedepartment and police were out and rescueed the coot. That was truly brilliant!

Mark

Here's a crop of the duck. This is a straight from a RAW conversion to jpg with no sharpening. I sometimes sharpen a very little in Bridge and , for web or printing, I would use a mild sharpening action I recorded for this use which involves 15 different stages. Good job I made that action! They're pretty useful - as are droplets.




I don't think the Shell duck was iced in as I have more images and he's moved. The wardens there are pretty good, too.

Thanks again,

Pat

[Greg Beetham]

I was just kidding Pat, I actually quite liked the scene, but I couldn't get over the ducks being in that icy water.
Greg

[mvanrheenen]

So, actually what we're seeing is the actual structure of the birds plumage! Sweet. An apology is in order for my theory about the sharpening. Sorry Pat!

Mark

[Wildieswife]

Ahhh - the other post has appeared below. It got 'lost' for a while and I got an error message. Now back down to work.........

[Wildieswife]

Greg - This is warm. In Finland and Canada they are experiencing -34C!

Mark - No apology necessary. The mallard does indeed have a strange feather structure. Lots of fluff under waterproofs - like we need in this weather! At another reserve I visited you could get an actual close up of the feathers - there was a gang of mallards chasing us about for food in the car park!

Thanks again,

Pat

[Birma]

Wonderful set from the reserve Pat. I especially like the Reed Bunting.

[david antony]

Wonderful shots Pat. The land around there is very similar to some around my parts with lots of different birds & such.

I think that duck is atop the ice Greg? I sure hope so.


Yes that is a great shot of the male Reed Bunting. O. T. Pako. Diane von Furstenberg was on Project Runway All Stars last week as a Judge. No doubt you caught it?