Which is Better?
I’ve begun the somewhat tedious task of editing the 1200 pics I took in Ireland. Given this wasn’t a birding trip, I somehow managed to take a lot of bird pictures, as I find myself taking many of pictures of Lifers – of which we had about 11 (pictures may reveal more). I may create a “travelogue” of my Ireland pics in the future (some might remember the 20+ posts from my 2020 Thailand trip) but in the meantime, as I come across something interesting I’ll share it. Thus today’s pics.
We drove around the Ring of Kerry, which was a beautiful and frightening endeavor. The Ring of Kerry is a road that is perched around the shoreline of a peninsula (hence the Ring), so it was beautiful. Frightening because I was driving a stick-shift (haven’t done that in 7 years) on the “wrong” side of the road as cars, trucks and tour busses came precariously close to pushing our car over the shoulder and down a steep and rocky drop-off. Every vehicular encounter was a heart-pumping experience!
We made a stop at the Cliffs of Kerry which are on privately owned property. From the parking lot you walk up a path to the top of the cliffs, which go straight down to the waves crashing onto the rocks some 150 feet below. Off in the distance were islands on which Northern Gannets and Puffins live during the summer. The rock cliffs and airspace around us would also have had hundreds of gulls and seabirds in the summertime, but being early October we saw four gulls.
The meadows leading away from the cliffs did have some birds flitting around, foraging in the grasses. One Lifer we saw there was the European Stonechat, a sparrow-sized passerine. The owners of the property, using all the Euros they rake in from admittance fees to their Cliffs of Kerry, erected some giant statues of the Northern Gannet. A European Stonechat landed on top of one of those statues and I had to get a couple of shots:
Kind of a fun shot – not really a GreatBirdPic – but I wanted to see if you could determine which was the better picture of the bird (the real one; not the statue). You have to look carefully, but one has a certain something that makes it a better bird photograph. Which one – top or bottom?
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I like the bottom one better. No particular reason
I like the top one… catch light in the eye is always better than none.. in my humble opinion..