In my never ending quest to get tighter photos of birds, I've noticed that I have been taking a lot of portraitesque photos lately. I'm not sure how popular they are generally, but I find I like them, particularly how they emphasise the bird's eye. It seem so many birds have fascinating eyes...
Magic! Loving the "do" in that first shot Lachlan, and those crimson eyes in the third, mesmerising. Envious how you've got heaps of feather detail showing in the all blacks/whites too! I really am trying to work on that personally, 50/50 I bugger the exposure up and lose so much detail with mine
. Great stuff 
West Coast Tasmania
Great shots, lachlan. love the Nictitating membrane on the Raven.
Shorty......Canon gear
Canberra
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rawshorty/
Yes - I like the Raven one too, though I didn't know it was called a "Nictitating membrane". (How does one nictitate?)
It reminds me of some of the shots in Game of Thrones - I thought they were blind crows or something.
Cheers
Tim
Brisbane
It was a three eyed crow wasn't it?
Is nictitating just the term for anything to do with eyebrows, or is it something special with birds?
I thought the Cattle Egret chick was so uggly it was cute? It was really sad though, the colony was carpeted with dead chicks.
I think one way to deal with exposure is to shoot on overcast days, asit reduces the chance of blowing the highlights.
Great work, love to get that close some day. ad
great pictures ... ibis and ducks have that membrame as well. I like the refections in the birds eyes ... i hope one day to see myself taking the picture in the birds eye. Your cockatoo sems to have good reflection of the scene in his eye. One advantage of birds in parks that are used to people are they let you get quite close ... i had dusky moorhens with chicks recently come within 2-3 metres quite unconcerned about me (most people even wont get that close to me !!)
great shots