Red-Winged Blackbird

My camera was struggling to focus on this red-winged blackbird out in last years corn field, so the bird is out of focus and lacks detail. However, I just loved the stuff unraveling down along the corn stock and couldn't bring myself to delete it.



I softened the background with masking.

And what do we have here?


I thought this was a Song Sparrow maybe, but after more research, I think it is a *female* red-winged blackbird. This surprised me. I did not know that the female and male look totally different. There were male red-wings in this area, so could very well be one too.

I did quite a bit of brightness/contrast work to lift the bird out of the scene. Layering and masking to soften background.

UPDATE: July 2010, more/better, I'll just add these here with the older ones.

Male, photo date 19 JUN 10:

Female, photo date 9 JUL 10 (speckled belly like above, here's the back view):

Another female blackbird front view photo here.

Chasing a Hawk, photo date 9 JUL 10:

(Post-processing note: I moved that bottom bird closer to the hawk so I could post a bigger cropped photo view.)

UPDATE 28Apr11:

Nice rich colors on this one. Good detail close up.