White-throated Sparrow + Repost

A winter bird in Oklahoma, and a reasonably friendly bird. Look for them foraging among leaf litter . White-throated Sparrows are brown above and gray below with a striking head pattern. The black-and-white-striped head is augmented by a bright white throat and yellow between the eye and the bill, which is gray. You’ll also see a less boldly marked form, known as “tan-striped,” with a buff-on-brown face pattern instead of white-on-black, like the one pictured.

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How does the detail look?

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Canon 60 D, Canon 70-300 IS USM Zoom, f/8, 1/1500 sec., ISO 800. Processed in Canon DPP and PSE 2020 for exposure and color. De-noise AI.

Love the shot of the White-throated Sparrow, Terry. Had a good sighting of this species just once in Massachusetts the Fall of past couple years. Observed watching it come in for seed and sunlight off the small front door steps. Had a good look from the door about 10 feet. A striking white throat which this shot doesn’t show (you have some gray though). The eye mark on my NE bird was yellow and no streaking on chest as you have, which makes me think this one is a juvenile. Agree that it was not overly concerned with the closeness of anyone’s presence. Considered a rare Fall and Winter bird in California and folks will chase it for a State or Co. list. Anyway, I like that you got in a position to it framed thru the branches, and the nice long tail is shown, nice pink texture on the feet too. Must be a good lens, how much crop did you use, Terry? Currently bidding on a 200-500 Nikkor lens and hope to capture some birds in 2021. Do you hand shoot or use a mono-pod? It would be cool if you could process the background for a consistent gray, like in TL area. Nice shot, thanks for sharing it.

Excellent detail in the sparrow, Terry and a sweet head turn. I’ve seen these a few times, though only one up here in the Puget Sound region. They are very photogenic birds. I think you might want to burn down the branch running from the lower left corner to the feet just a bit-it tends to pull my eye away from the bird.

Hi, Stephen. This is a fairly heavy crop - about 70 per cent. The lens I use is not one of Canon’s best; it’s more along the lines of a budget zoom in Canon’s line. Hoping for an upgrade for Christmas! I shoot most everything Hand Held. Look for ward to seeing some of your work. Thanks!

Thanks, Dennis. I agree that branch is a bit distracting, so I burnt it down, as suggested. Does the repost look better?

Nice photo of the Sparrow. This is a variety that gets a lot of birders excited in our area. I like the nice colors. The repost does look better.

@terryb Hi Terry. Good job on that twig. It looks much less distracting now and quite natural. Sometimes the grays from burning look weird and I’ve been known to pick up some browns from another twig and paint over a bright area with a semi-transparent brush instead of burning, but this worked really well.

@Dennis_Plank, I’ve never been a fan of burning, having had the exact same experience as you describe. However, I set the opacity @ twenty percent, sized the brush as exactly as I could to the size of the branch, and made one pass. I was shocked it looked as good as it did, so I called it good!

Thanks, David. Interesting that birders in your area get excited over this bird. Just goes to show we should never take birds we might consider “common” for granted!