New at this...

I took some shots of this bird out of my kitchen window with my 70-200mm L and found that only Partial Metering would give me decent results. But when I use that type of metering should I focus on the head or body? ...or does it matter?

This shot screams for flash the bird is mostly lifeless looking as posted with the brighter background over shadowing the birds feathers and details here. Partial metering will measure the light in the circle of the viewfinder but on the medium to consumer cameras they do not have spot metering so you are sampling like almost 10% of the image and may not give you the results you want unless you can get the subject to take up the entire area, also when metering partial or spot the camera will try to make the subject gray, whites will turn gray and blacks get pused to gray so you most often on a white bird will meter the whites and then adjust your compensation up a 1/3rd or more and the opposite with shooting darker subjects. I normally use evalutive or center weighted and get good results with those. Still a subject in the shadow with a bright background will most often need flash to bring the most details out of the subject.

I think the shot is pretty good for a couple of reasons.

First, it looks really good for being shot through the window! The glass always messes up focus & exposure a little bit. It may be a bit dark, but using flash though a window doesn't always help much either. I would have done eactly what you did - captured something interesting, at the small expense of not being technically perfect. (I call these kind of shots documentaries )

Second, it's a great behaviour shot and very sweet. You don't normally see Finches on a Hummmingbird feeder. Finches do like sweet-water too, so every now & then you will catch one trying to drink if you're quick. By the way - your Mallard pic was another very interesting behaviour shot, do I see a pattern developing?

Thirdly, what I think makes this shot is the very fact that it looks exactly like what I image you DID see through the window. But then again, I'm partial to images that feel & look like we're peeking into the critter's life real-time. I like that it's real, and not contrived or commercial feeling.

BTW - I prefer eval metering. And would have picked & locked the exposure based on the bird & background, without the feeder in the pic because it's too "light" and would skew the expossure. Then, recomposed and shot positioned just like you choose.

Thanks for all they help everyone. I usually just shoot landscapes so this type of stuff is kinda tricky to me.

First of all, I think I really need to get a flash. I'll put it on the top of my "To Buy" list, right next to a decent tripod.

Ok, Dragonslayer. I've only been shooting for about 2 months so im sorry if I got this wrong, but your saying that if I'm shooting a white bird in Partial Metering mode then I should adjust the exposure to over-expose the picture by 1/3 of a stop? And then under-expose by 1/3 if the subject is darker? And with Center Weighted Metering you wouldn't have to worry about this? Thanks so much for the usefull information

Haha, and LazyPhotographer that's something that suprized me too! The window was by no means spotless, I'm suprized it didn't turn out worse. It was strange tho, I usually shoot in Evaluative Metering but I never got decent results with it, the BG was fine but the bird was always too dark. I guess I could have just adjusted the exposure to over-expose the background a bit and check the histogram to see how the bird looked. But then again a flash would still probbly the best choice (if I wasn't behind a window)

With all that being said, I really like the look of the bird. I wish I could have captured it a little better because just before that it had it's beak in the feeder, and this shot is just after it realized that I hadn't filled the feeder up this week. Kind of like it's looking in the feeder to try to find the liquid that should be in there. Hehe