Just to go over the rules again...
But do you Goldfinches listen? No you don't!
Absolutely delighted to see the parents and brood of pretty much adults on a town park pond. I'd not seen any of them for a while, and feared for their safety.
Reading, UK
Canon R6 + 311mm (yay, zoom), f7.1, 1/1250s, ISO1250
Reading, UK
What can I say? It creeps round trees, I rarely see it, and just look at those claws!
Canon R6 + RF800mm, ISO10000 (c.f. creeps round trees!), 1/1250s, F9
Google suggests a Duclair Duck (and so an escapee) but I'm unconvinced.
Seen on the Thames at Reading. Canon R6 + 800mm
An alternative name for a kestrel, and definitely what this one was doing!
Reading, UK, Canon R6 + RF800mm, 1/2000s, F10, ISO1000, Exposure Bias +1 1/3
Must have knocked the dial as that should have been F9. For most of its hover, its head was in the shadow of its wing , making for less than perfect shots needing drastic post processing, e.g.
Reading, UK - today, which rather surprised me to still see a flock of Swallows around. I find them really hard to photo - they notoriously don't land, and fly fast, so this lot of photos is as good as I get.
Canon R6 + RF 800mm, 1/1250s, ISO 100 or 350 for these
Always a delight to see flitting about, even more of a delight if they stay still long enough to photo. Reading,UK
Red Kite, Prospect Park, Reading, UK Canon R6 + RF 800mm
I like how the colours came out, especially as this was a dark bird on a white sky, which is always needs correction when on auto-ISO.
I'm reasonably sure this is a Chiffchaff, though it might be some other sort of warbler, and I was pleased to get such an action shot. (even if a bit obscured) Reading, UK.
And I suppose to complete it, House Martins from the same group gathering the mud in the harbour
I'm deeply sorry - I just left it to your imaginations :)
Perhaps a proper Kite photo to compensate, possibly even the same bird.
Oh, very well done - and if that level of camera shake is all you have to worry about, you're a far better photographer than I! Just a bit of a shame the file downloaded so slowly I didn't get to the end before other things called, but that's not on you.
Indeed, this sort of thing (also taken today, but somehow doesn't appeal as much to me)
Those are the tools to play with (might also be called Gamma Adjustment), but I think in this particular case, because of those lovely areas where the sun is shining through, having the rest of the body dark (and the sky bright) works really rather well.
Fun, and nice to see a classic LBJ (Little Brown Job - you know, that species of bird you're always seeing but can never name) in a different light.
Wow, did everything just align for you, or was there some method you could share to getting such a great shot? To get the light suggests only one good direction to be pointing in, to get the detail they must have been quite close, and to get the kite to be turning to show its "catch" off and the crow likewise to get the light on its feathers so well ... I'm very jealous.
Looking at Wikipedia entries, Google's ID by appearance seems good (but might also be a Painted Stork). However, Yellow-Billed Storks are African, and Milky Storks South-East Asia, so given the OPs location, the latter seems more likely.
I find the Cornell Lab's Merlin Photo ID very good, but it would be too much time & effort to download the SE Asia pack for one photo :)
Ah, I meant which country was it taken in - I'm from the UK, and I don't recognise the bird: most like one of our moorhens I supoose.
Let's see if this works
This is the JPG from Canon's DPP4, so still noise removal but nothing like as directed. The improvement is not that obvious until you zoom in, but moves the photo from ho-hum to just about shareable.
I like the way you've shown the context in one photo, the bird in the other. Is that just digital zoom or two photos and an optical zoom?