Short-billed Dowitcher (1 in series of 2)

Most of my SBDO shots - flight shots included - are on/against blue backgrounds, so I was stoked to intersect this individual foraging against a distant dune background while guiding at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in South Texas. I'm all about subject isolation, and shooting from a prone position allowed me generate the super-soft, two-toned background and hella-smooth foreground around the sharp subject. I'm a stickler for face and leg detail, so I was really happy focus didn't fall off anywhere on the bird's body. The adjacent feeding frame is the same bird a few strides later.

South Padre Island, Texas, 11/6/19
Canon 600mm f/4 IS II + 1.4x III on EOS 1DX Mark II
1/3200 at f/7.1, ISO 1000