Spent this morning at one of my favorite San Diego bird photography spots, Whelan Lake in Oceanside. One of the reasons I enjoy this area so much is the beautiful sunrise colors on the water. This is an Eared Grebe in non breeding colors. Somewhat of a drab look, but the orange eyes set it off. Shot with a Canon R5, 600 mm f/4.0. Mounted on a tripod that was mostly submerged in the water, leaving the camera about 8-12" above the water. I used a remote shutter release and focused with the LCD screen. This keeps the POV low so the golden water surrounds the bird.
SS 1/1600, ISO 1000, F/4.0, EC +1.0. Processed in PS with bird brought up in ACR about 1.0 full stops and BG brought down about 0.3 stops.

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You are welcome. I like to see what the photographer was thinking or what they faced when making an image.

No we did not see either of those birds-we were too far south. There are 46 different members of this family-very widespread over the tropics and the two you mentioned are the only ones that occasionally venture into the US.

Yes. I hope the termite lunch was worth it.

I agree. The star of this image is the Titmouse and you have captured great detail, head angle, colors. If the bird were brought up (does not need a ton of brightening) U think you would draw more attention to the bird.
Under any circumstances you have captured a nice bird and your image does it justice.

We are usually amazed at the colors and beauty of the birds we see in the tropics. Different than most of our birds here in the USA and Canada, few tropic birds molt into "non breeding season" colors. These tropical birds are colorful and beautiful year round. Every once in while though we run into a bird that is less than perfect in its appearance. This is one of those birds. This is a Black-tailed Trogon from Panama. This bird spent about 20 minutes with his head stuck in a termite nest, presumably feasting on termites. If you look closely at his beak there are still termites stuck there. When he pulled his head out, this was the result. Not sure what he is going to do about this (remember-he has no hands). Certainly he is still colorful, but not as picturesque as he might be.
Deb took this shot with a Canon R7, 100-500 mm lens at 300 mm. Shot at 1/800, f/5.6, ISO 3200, EC +0.3. Processed in PS with BG brought down and bird brought up as the entire picture was underexposed about 2/3 stop.

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Kathy,
I am afraid the left side of the photo has some major flaws. Look at the sky in the tree's upper margin-some major "funk" here. Also there are some branches in the left hand side that obviously do not belong there.
This would be a really difficult merge with lots of detail to go haywire. I think your camera would have to be on a tripod to make it work.
As presented you could "fix" some of these flaws but that would depend how much time you want to spend on it and also what your judged shows would allow.
It is a beautiful tree though.

I use Good Synch. Works well backing up to 2 external HDDs. Not free, but worth it. Will do your BU automatically or manually or combination.
In the past I used "copy and paste" but that depended on me-not always a sure thing.

Certainly one of the more entertaining families of birds we encounter are Manakins. Colorful, animated, relatively common, these guys have a lot going for themselves. This is a Golden-collared Manakin; we saw and photographed him in western Panama. Often these birds are seen at leks which are areas where the male birds come to dance to try to attract the attention of the females. Their dances can be quite involved with "moonwalking", jumping, and even using "wingmen" to help them win the attention of the girls.
This image was taken with an R5, 100-500 mm lens at 500 mm, f/7.1, SS 1/320 and ISO 3200.
Processed in PS, bird brought up and BG brought down. Distracting branches were removed in L upper corner.

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Kind words. Thank you for looking and commenting.

Thank you. An underrated bird IMO.