A couple of oldies

[AlfandBen]

Not much about at the moment so these are some I took a while ago.

1) European Starling


2) A pair of collared doves,

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day mate

Two beaut images - and the birds are sharing the same tree by the looks of it. Is this common?

Phil

[AlfandBen]

Hi Phil,

Same tree different times, but we do occasionally get several species at once (for a short time).

[David_MC]

Nice shots.

[wigz]

Good exposure and colour with a clean background. I’m a bit concerned the starling is going to get poked in the eye by the twig pointing to it

[avkomp]

decent light on both pix,
busy foregrounds that would likely benefit from cropping closer.
composition wise the starling would have been stronger with more room to the left instead of the right. imho.
and i thought of it getting poked in the eye also. nice pix

[Isac]

I think a bit of cropping would improve the aesthetics but that's your call. Yeah the twig looks a bit close to its eye but that's a quick edit to fix it.
As Stephen commented, creating more room to the left shows the space that the bird is looking into. When we view a photo of humans or animals, our eye will follow the same direction as the subject. To achieve that, it's good to create space in that same direction or placing the positive space (subject) with the negative space (background).
With your first image, I created more space for the bird to look into (using the Rule of Thirds on this occasion) which the viewer will also look into. Because we read from left to right, I flipped it horizontally.

[AlfandBen]

Thanks Isac, That looks much better but way beyond my limited editing skills

[Isac]

Your welcome A&B. Not that difficult with Photoshop. Plenty of tutorials on how to add extra space to an image. I suppose doing this stuff for 30 + years it comes easy. Keep learning my friend, it's very rewarding. Editing is now a major tool in turning our photos into creative works.

[AlfandBen]

Nice shots.

Thanks David

Good exposure and colour with a clean background. I’m a bit concerned the starling is going to get poked in the eye by the twig pointing to it

decent light on both pix,
busy foregrounds that would likely benefit from cropping closer.
composition wise the starling would have been stronger with more room to the left instead of the right. imho.
and i thought of it getting poked in the eye also. nice pix

Alan and Stephen thank you for your suggestions / comments. I hadn't noticed the stick but did wonder why I had positioned the starling so far left as I was posting it. I will try to find the original to see if there was something else that I might have found difficult to remove.