Helping Mom and Dad?

We’re still feeding grubs to the Western Bluebirds in the morning. They appear to be working on their second brood for the season and this juvenile from the first brood may be helping them feed the new chicks. Their nest box appears to be toward the back of the property, so I don’t have a good enough view to be sure but we have seen them do so in the past and this one has been picking up multiple grubs and flying toward the nest box they seem to be using. Our pet food store was out of mealworms, so these are waxworms, which the Bluebirds seem to like even better.

What technical feedback would you like if any?

Anything you note. Nothing much done to this image other than cropping, noise reduction, feather texture enhancement and a bit of extra blur to the upper background.

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

I’m not sure about the crop. Normally I’d probably put the bird higher in the frame but there was a partial out-of-focus sibling in the bowl below this one.

Any pertinent technical details:

7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 484 mm, tripod with ball head and Sidekick, f/7.1, 1/30 (this shutter speed lowered the percent of keepers, but improved the exposure), iso 2000. Processed in LR & PS CC. Noise reduction using Neat Image. Feather enhancement using Topaz Detail. Cropped to 4722 x 3066 before resizing for the web. Taken this morning at 5:30 am (theoretical sunrise was 5:40, but it’s always another 10-15 minutes before it clears buildings and vegetation).

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This is a very nice image of this juvenile Bluebird, Dennis. That is amazing that they help the parents feed the second brood. The lighting, colors and details is excellent.

Beautifully captured, Dennis. We don’t see these birds over here - such a lovely colour in the tail feathers on this youngster. Nice moment to have caught the bird and perfect dof.