Desert Wheatear

[Tushar Dixit]

Dear all:

My first post on IndiaWilds. C&C most welcome!

Desert Wheatear - one of the beautiful winter visitors here. It was great to see them back this year too during last week's outing! Unseasonal rains are playing a spoilsport these days - hope to see the season unfold nicely...

EOS 7D with 400mm f/5.6L @ f/8, ISO 400, 1/1600.

[Gautam Biswas]

very nice.

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Welcome to Indiawilds Tushar!
First nice post, i loved composition and the background that is nicely diffused. Look forward to more, keep posting
tfs

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Tushar,
Cute bird. Nice image. Where was this photographed? The background is well diffused. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi
PS: It is heavily raining here in chennai as well. No birding. :(

[Mrudul Godbole]

Hi Tushar,

Nice composition. The eye contact and the details are nice. Nice clean background.

Some more details from Wikipedia-

The Desert Wheatear (Oenanthe deserti) is a wheatear, a small passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the Thrush family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher, Muscicapidae.

The upper parts of the male in summer are buff. The underparts are white with a buff tinge on the breast. The black on the face and throat extends to the shoulders, and there is distinct white superciliary stripe.

The best character, in both sexes at all ages, is that the entire tail is black to the level of the uppertail coverts. The female is greyer above and buffer below and has no black on the throat, and in the winter plumage the black on the throat of the male is obscured by white tips.

Thanks for sharing.

[Akshay Kumar Manjunath]

Wow nice image tushar,

composition and eye contact is good .

Regards,
Akshay

[Tushar Dixit]

@Sabyasachi: I shot this near Pune - in a grasslands habitat.

@Mrudul: Thanks for the information - it now being part of Muscicapidae is new to me. The male is indeed handsome but extremely shy! Based on my observation, males arrive a little late and are very difficult to approach.