Lonely Grackle

I was very fortunate to finally get one of these beautiful critter's

in just the right lighting. They are iridescent black but reflect the

surrounding colors and often appear bluish purple. Frequently, they

are mistaken for crows but they are smaller and more slender in

build. No color manipulation was performed. Best viewed full size.

Critiques and comments are much appreciated.

Lovely, lovely color and composition. I like the way he looks back at us. I do think the image would be better if the plane of focus had been a little further back, to get his head in focus. But even with that nit, this is a fine photograph.

Love the colors and detail, 6/6

Michael, maybe he forgot how to swim and can't figure out how to get off the rock. The lighting is perfect and with the background as is it keeps your attention on the bird. Maybe a tiny bit more DOF would be nice but I know how tough that is when shooting small birds. These guys always remind me of Brewer's blackbirds. Great pose.

Thank you, Jamie. I didn't have much shutter speed to work with, so I was unable to reduce the aperture size any further without bringing camera shake into the picture.