loggerhead shrike

Nice shots, shame about that vertical branch though.

Mark nice sharp images here. I agre with Ken about the OOF vertical branch. I might at least be tempted to clone out the twig that's almost touching the bird's head.

Nice set of images...nice and sharp with good poses and BG.. I find shrikes to be fascinating and was lucky enough to photograph a Northern Shrike this past Winter.

Taking out the branches is possible but not easy for the first images where/ when you would have to reconstruct small portions of the tail..It can be done but lots of time ( at least for me). Your last image though is a good contender for the removal of branches with the entire bird visible. I took the liberty since you have " Image Editing OK" in your signature. I used a cloning brush and patching tool on a duplicate layer in Photoshop. The eraser tool was used when I went too far. I also used a few different opacities when cloning to try and get a good mesh on the BG where I removed branches..a blur brush was used to do a quick pass on the BG to remove noise. I hope you approve and if not, just let me know and I will remove the edit immediately.

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Excellent series, well done.

Super fine shots Mark, great looking bird!

Great shots -- what a nice looking bird!

Great shots of this Shrike.

Wow, you got pretty close to the bird. Great shots.

Well done Mark, excellent shots.

Love your edit Gary, you have shown how to turn what was already a very good shot into an even better one.

Great work all round.

Stuart

thanks all for the nice comments.

thanks gary that is really cool. un fotunatly my PP skills are very week. i wish i could learn how to do that kind of stuff. excellant job and thanks for your work on it.

Taking out the branches is possible but not easy for the first images where/ when you would have to reconstruct small portions of the tail..It can be done but lots of time ( at least for me). Your last image though is a good contender for the removal of branches with the entire bird visible. I took the liberty since you have " Image Editing OK" in your signature. I used a cloning brush and patching tool on a duplicate layer in Photoshop. The eraser tool was used when I went too far. I also used a few different opacities when cloning to try and get a good mesh on the BG where I removed branches..a blur brush was used to do a quick pass on the BG to remove noise. I hope you approve and if not, just let me know and I will remove the edit immediately.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

Excellent shots Mark,

I love these birds (maybe cause we never see them here).
(and a real nice job by Gary to make that last shot a so much better frame)

Kenn

Beautiful shots Mark.....we have these around here but I've never located one.

Nice shot and I love the edit also. I saw these birds in Florida but was unable to get a decent shot of one. Don't see them around here in Mid.Tenn. much..love that little Robin Hood mask!
Karen

Lovely shots - and the edited one.

Linda