American Bittern

This is a heavy crop extracted from a noisy RAW file, but I was able to salvage it with some aggressive editing in Lightroom and Topaz. Though I've seen this marsh denizen on many occasions, this was my first semi-decent photographic opportunity at it. That's the main reason I worked so hard to breath life into it in post-production. I wish his gaze was angle slightly more towards us, but I couldn't pass up the full upstroke pose and the dangling feet.

Sierra Valley, Sierra County, California, 5/30/21
Canon 600mm f/4 IS II + 1.4x III on EOS 1DX Mark II
1/2000 at f/5.6, ISO 3200