red bird- Ghana

[rick93]

I took a walk in the bush here a while ago and saw this bird. Hard to come close for a nice pic but here are two of the best I took of him.
I heard here that this bird is "poisonous" (nonsense of course) but it sure keeps these birds safe because the boys here won't shoot them with their slingshots for meat. Pretty much everything else gets shot here

Took these with my Canon 450D + Tamron SP 70-300 VC Di USD.

1. Shot at 1/1250sec ISO 800, f/6.3 and 300mm focal lenght.

2. at 1/125sec, ISO 400, f/5.6 zoomed in at 300mm

Thanks for looking!

 

[Jaemie]

Nice. I like #2. Looks very poisonous - haha.. Some parts look slightly overexposed. Both photos could be sharper, but I understand the difficulties shooting birds at distance. What kind of bird is this?

 

[rick93]

Thanks Jaemie,
They have to be a whole lot sharper but I had no luck getting close. Both are cropped too. I got close to one once but then my dogs decided to check up on me ( I had told them to wait for me at some place) and scared the bird away. Great timing!
I looked it up and I guess they are Southern Masked Weaver or the Red Bishop birds. I could be wrong
Surely incredible poisonous.

 

[Joel_W]

Picture #1 is a super composition. Could use more of a crop. Love those intersecting leaves with their various shades of green, but there is just too much of them, hence the needed additional crop. Picture #2 Really needs an additional crop on all four sides. The lower portion is over exposed from what appears to be direct sunlight.

 

[rick93]

Thanks for your comment Joel. I hate cropping pictures more when they are not sharp.

Took another walk yesterday (gotta love weekends) and saw the same kind of bird again. I think this pic is a little better.
Shot a 1/400sec ISO 400 f/6.3 zoomed in at 300mm.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

[Jaemie]

Oh, that last image is very nice. It could be sharper and I'd crop out that small stray leaf on the left, but otherwise it's a fine bird standing-on-branch photo, imo.