I had been out walking along a dike and saw a hawk out in the marsh. I decided to change from 1.4 TC to a 2.0 TC. When I finished and looked up hawk was gone but shrike had parked right beside me.
Photo seems rather documentary but is very representative of type of shot I have ever gotten of a shrike.
Any.
Is this a composite: No
R5, 500mm +2.0 TC, f/8, 1/500, ISO 3200, tripod.
Cropped to 60% of full width.
I have never seen one… nice portrait with nice details and shooting angle.
The butcher bird! I don’t have any decent shots of these guys, so kudos. You handled the exposure really well. I love that skinny stem, and I really like the high key background. Very nice. My only two nits are that I would move the bird off center a bit if you have the canvas, and I can see a bit of noise in the bird–probably unavoidable at ISO 3200.
First of all, I’m jealous. I have long wanted to see a shrike! Nothing wrong with a documentary photo. Good detail and nice pose.
Simply wonderful - I love those birds. Normally I am not a big fan of bird-against-the-sky, but here it works really well, good you had a covered sky - love the details in the bird. As a matter of fact, it really reminds me of an image I made myself, with the bird in almost exactly the same position. Only difference is that mine is the European species 
… Nice work ! Hans
There’s a small amount of noise present in the feathers, but you can try to re-edit the RAW file to see whether you can further minimize the noise. Nice looking bird and I think that the shrike looks good with the high key presentation…Jim
Thanks everyone for the comments. We generally get a couple of these birds around each winter. In particular where this bird was photographed seems a popular wintering spot for them.
Here is a repost with better NR. Hopefully it is a better job. And thanks @Lyle_Gruby and @Jim_Zablotny for pointing this out. Lyle I do have more room and could add a bit on the left side. I went for this squarish look because of the “technical” nature of the shot. The other thing I need to do is figure out when in my workflow I should be doing my final crop. In this case it was at the RAW stage.
Hi David
Thank you for my first image of a Northern Shrike. The eye contact, detail and coloring are very nice. The second posting does clean up what little noise there was in your first posting.
Peter
Excellent, David. I too haven’t seen many of these and this is a better image than I’ve managed. To my eye, you lost a bit of the finest detail in the second image, but when I sit back at a reasonable viewing distance they’re both just fine.
Hi David, really nice catch of a tough to get subject. I have zero shots of this bird. I like what you did with the repost. Details and noise control look great. I like the crop too. Well done.
