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A Spoiler
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A Spoiler

by Dennis Plank

Gallery: Weekly ChallengePosted December 11, 201567 views4 comments
Not sure if this is quite legal or not, but this Australian bird is a Brush Turkey and is one of the Megapodes that incuubate their eggs in a mound of decaying vegetation.  It is about the size of our wild turkeys, looks amazingly like them except for the odd tail, and used to be eaten until it was outlawed there.  I was hoping one of our Australian members would chime in, but I haven't seen much of them on the site lately.  This one was from our trip to Australia a coupleof years ago.  We'd seen and heard them almost every day, but it wasn't until our last outing at the botanical Gardens in Cairns that I managed to get a decent shot of one.  This guy was in and out of the sun and shade along the trees and I liked this slightly shadowed one the best as that bright yellow wattle wanted to get blown out in the sun.

7D, 300mm f4 ISL + 1.4 TC, hand held, f/6.3, 1/1250, iso 1000, aperture priority, pattern metering, +2/3 EV.  Processed in LR5 & CS6.  Cropped to 13 Mpixels.  Taken November 3rd, 2013 (I won't even try to do the time conversion at this late date).

Thanks for looking,

 

Comments

4 comments
Comment posted by John Tobias on December 12, 2015 at 12:50 AM
Good photo of this down under "turkey".  I like that you have kept detail in all areas of the bird.  Also like the one foot up, gives a good look at this big foot turkey.  TFS
 
Registered on September 12, 2009, 2120 Posts, 6455 Comments
Comment posted by Mark Seaver on December 12, 2015 at 6:15 PM
If by legal, you're wondering about upland birds, I'm sure it fits.  What astonishing colors in the head and wattle.  You did well controlling the brightness and you've got great details in the bird.  Those feet look huge.
Registered on January 23, 2011, 1103 Posts, 17270 Comments
Comment posted by Albert Darmo on December 12, 2015 at 10:26 PM
Hi Dennis crying   What an impressive  bird.  with that huge tail. and  big  feet...    well captured with  fine detail  and color.

Albert Darmo
Canada
Registered on November 25, 2008, 1386 Posts, 11978 Comments
Comment posted by Cay-Uwe Kulzer on December 13, 2015 at 1:52 AM
Dennis,

another contrast challenge that you managed well. A pitty that the light conditions were not in your favour since the pose and action of the bird are great.
Registered on January 27, 2004, 494 Posts, 4021 Comments