The female Cardinal had a good bath in the stream between my backyard ponds, however, my favorite from the series is this pose at the end. (7D2, 100-400 @ 330, 1/2500 s, f/8, iso 4000, tripod, cropped to 73% FF) With perfect hindsight, I wonder about being “on the ball” enough to have zoomed in for this from a setting set to get lots of flying water…
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Hi Mark
Is’n hindsight wonderful, what you have is a vary sharp looking Cardinal, the color, detail and eye contact looked very nice. How did you get the 7Dll to look that clean at 4,000 ISO. (I have a 7Dll and never shoot above 1,200.)
Peter
Great head turn and I like the looks of the water, Mark. Excellent job on the noise reduction. I’ve used the 7DII at that iso, but the focus and exposure have to be absolutely perfect to get the noise reduction to work this well.
What a beautiful pose of this female Cardinal, Mark. That head turn sure works nice. Love the reflections in the water, the eye level view, and such details in the feathers. Great image. 
Great detail and setting, and a lovely pose! Female Cardinals are so pretty – I think it’s a combination of the subtle coloring and the lipstick!
Nice pose with good eye contact. In addition to all the detail I like the nice complimentary colors throughout the image. I agree with Peter, hindsight is wonderful. You have lovely photo and were ready for action if it started.
Such a sweet pose! The colors all add up for a warm and inviting scene. What a beautiful bird. As someone else said, at ISO 4000 my camera’s sensor would generate a lot of noise. Did you apply noise reduction in LR or PS, or (like me) take advantage of Topaz Denoise which I love for low light bird photography…in moderation!
And, next time you’ll catch some flying water!
@peter and @Mark_Muller, at iso greater than 800 on the 7D2, I apply some extra noise reduction in the “Detail” menu of Lightroom, under the luminance and color items particularly. That looks to work fine (as you see here), possible with a very slight loss in detail, that’s hard to see unless you’re looking at a 100% magnification or higher.
Hi Mark
Thank you for that information. I am currently using Dxo PhotoLab 4, because our friends at Lightroom class will not support my new Mac’s so Big Sur.
Peter