Waxwings on Rowan Tree

Waxwings taken today with the K5 and Sigma 150-500



Waxwing on Rowan tree by Alan Wennington, on Flickr



Catch by Alan Wennington, on Flickr



Waxwing gymnastics by Alan Wennington, on Flickr



Waxwing berry catching by Alan Wennington, on Flickr



Waxwing eating Rowan berries by Alan Wennington, on Flickr

Superb shots Alan, they are such beautiful birds, I like the way you've managed to catch them with the berries in mid air. Thank you for sharing these with us.

Great shots!... the top one looks like a Big Bird eating an apple

Cracking shots

I have not so much as spotted one of these let alone taken pictures of this quality of one

Some nice pics there Alan but a bit over sharpened for my tastes.

Second one in particular has some nasty jaggies round just about everything (especially the berry).

Thanks Mike. Not much sharpening applied, apart from the one you specifically mentioned. On that one there was some movement blur on the head which I tried to minimise with cack handed sharpening and the clone tool around the beak. If it had been a straightforward pic I would have just binned it. But I like the moment it captures

Difficult lighting. Processing involved a lot of lifting shadows, and adding clarity. Thinking about it, adding the clarity can have a similar effect to sharpening

Great shots! The last two weeks our garden has been "invaded" by large flocks of Waxwings. They are possibly attracted to the slightly neglected fruit trees and berry bushes in our garden, and fortunately they take care of the left over plums and berries Wonderful birds!

Bjørn

These are utterly superb photos

Really good shots Alan. Whilst you are inundated I haven't seen one this year (we do have them) !

#1 does indeed look like a dinosaur sized bird eating an orange !

I see your grey skies do detract a little from the shots - someone was trying to teach me how to change grey to blue the other day (I don't have PS though and it's tough to do in Aperture). A useful skill to learn perhaps

Thanks for comments everyone - much appreciated.

Good point Kevin. Photoshop is something I try to avoid ... lol.

These were taken with the Siggy 150-500 on Saturday. I went back yesterday with the new DA 300. I'll post some pics taken with that later

Alan - here's an example. Not my work, someone offered to give it a try. My original and his reworked blue sky version.