Stellar's Jay

[Downrigger]

Mainly this is for the many bird lovers because it's quite a handsome Jay. This guy was around - atypically in the deciduous stuff and I tried for a few days to get a good shot. This is as close as I got and there's lot's wrong with it. I could clone out some of the intervening out-of-focus twig on the shoulders but couldn't deal with the stuff lower down owing to matching the feather markings correctly. Second it's soft and a bit noisy - the former owes partly to a 1:1 crop and the latter to the crop and ISO 800.

My understanding of wildlife at this point is that you keep your best ones to remember your errors until you get chance to make better ones to replace them.

[deetheturk]

For me Mark its still an acceptable shot of a beautiful bird! We have got loads in the woods around here but the coloration is different from yours.

[Downrigger]

We have got loads in the woods around here but the coloration is different from yours.

Thank you David - send some this way, I'd like to improve on this one.

[Stinky]

Nice job. Sometimes it is not the quality but the ability to see and document the various species. I feel as long as you are out there with the camera, the opportunities will present themselves.

[terrib]

I agree with you Mark. Keep the shot. These guys are hard to catch because they flit about so quickly. They like corn and will come in to eat cobs that I've put out for the pine squirrels. I've noticed that when they come in, they tend to repeat the same path. For instance, one would always land on the trunk of a nearby pine and then fly to the corn from there. So I set up the shot to catch him when he landed on the first tree. They are beautiful birds.

[Downrigger]

Thanks, Terri "These guys are hard to catch", and Steve "...I feel as long as you are out there with a camera'...".

If you get a great image, it's about the image, but a lot of the time, like this one, it's about the bird.

[IzzieK]

Nice cool shot, Mark. I just don't like the eyes part...don't know why...the rest is good though so no nit to pick up there...

[jamn4ex]

Thanks for posting Mark . I have not come across them out here. We have tons of Blue jays though.

[Downrigger]

Thanks Izzie - the problem with the eye is that it is ess oh eff tee. Due to, I think, low light big crop noise and AF bringing me a little nearer than I should have been. (I'm chicken on manual focus).
But thanks to you, and to James for more or less getting a kick out of this, for what it is.