While photographing a Great Blue Heron yesterday evening, my photog collegue, Patrice Allibert, caught sight of this female Merlin perched just to the right opf us.

Canon 7D with the 500L f4 lens with 1.4II extender on tripod @ 1/1000, f5.6, ISO 400, + 1 exposure compensation.

The first few frames were quickly taken without my extender, and I risked taking the time to slap it on quickly. I was lucky that the bird was perched on a tall branch sticking out of water, with the far bank way behind her - this assured a nice uncluttered background.

Cropped in about 40% to my usual 12 x 16 format. A tiny portion of the tip of the lower branch cropped away because it was curling upwards and was distracting. A touch of halo on this optimized web version blurred away on the branchs and bird's back after reducing to 72ppi. Despeckled the background after sharpening to reduce background noise. Slight dodging of the eye.

Cheers,

Mike