Warbler: Before - After

Yellow Warbler (Dendroica petechia)


This image is a composite of two images of the same yellow warbler taken within one second of each other. I was surprised by how fast this bird could “deflate”! I think that this is a female bird judging by the near absence of reddish streaks on the breast. The pair of birds were quite excited by my presence. Likely their nest was nearby. I don’t know if the inflation performance was an effort to scare me away. My impression was that this was all very routine and the bird was just “taking a breather”.


I welcome any comments on this image. I know that some of the weird background looks like Photoshop artifacts. However, the vast majority of it was there in the raw files (notably the OOF white branch growing out of the RHS bird's head!). That said, if you do spot something that you think is due to Photoshop, I’d like to know. It did take a fair amount of work for me to merge the images...and I still keep finding bad bits that I missed!

EOS 7D, EF 400 mm f/5.6, 580 EXII: each image was identical in settings: ISO 400, 1/1000 s, f/6.3. The flash fired for the “Fat Bird” image but not for the “Thin Bird” image. (If you look carefully you make out a small catchlight due the flash). Both images subjected to NR and sharpening as well as some exposure adjustment. The composite image is 3395 pixels x 2716 pixels (=9.2 MP or 51% of the 18 MP of the 7D).