Pheasant Coucal

[Ironwood]

First time I have been able to shoot one of these on my property. We see a lot of them along the road to town though.
I only got time for a couple of shots before it took off, not enough time to dial in the exposure properly, the grass behind was in full sun, but the bird and fencepost was in the shade, I was still at least a stop or two underexposed, I recovered the shadows as much as I could but was losing too much detail, this is as good as I could get out of the best shot I took.

Nikon D7100, Tamron 150-600, @600mm, f6.3, 1/800, iso1600, handheld. This is cropped about 50-60%.

[avkomp]

nice job on this one, a bit of shadow/highlight around the face might bring up the facial detail a bit.

[Ironwood]

I just tried again to lighten the face, I can get it lighter but the further I go the noisier it gets and I just lose too much detail.
I'm afraid with my skills and the tools I have, this is about as good as I can get it.

[Ironwood]

I had a bit of a play around with this one, slightly moved the crop, removed the green leaves on the left, applied a bit of NR, and lightened the face a bit more.

[Sully]

Wow .... terrific specimen to capture Brad .... very 'goth' like

[seaslug]

Strange looking bird! Quite a good shot of it!

[Alan]

Great looking birds - seen a few but never got a decent photo - well done.

Excellent edit Brad

[Ironwood]

Cheers Barb, Greg, and Alan. Although I didn't get a perfect shot of this bird, I am happy that I got this shot at least. I noticed it sitting on the fence post out of a rollerdoor when I was working in my shed, had to run up to the house about 70 meters away to get my camera , my hands weren't real steady by the time I got back but luckily the bird was still there, I took a few shots as I was adjusting the settings trying to get the exposure right for the bird in shadow. It spotted me moving out of the rollerdoor, frizzed up his neck then took off. We see a few of these birds running across the road on the way into town, but this is the first one I have seen on our property.

[wigz]

looks pretty good to me given the difficult lighting. Whenever I see these they are disappearing into the bush.

[Ironwood]

Thanks Alan. I was pretty surprised to see this one on the fencepost, usually I only see them on the road where I can't pull up to get a photo, even if they did hang around long enough.