A male Downy Woiodpecker. He was very agitated because a female Downy kept chasing him away from the feeder, so he puffed up his head. Perhaps he thought it made him look more intimidating ;-)
Taken in late afternoon, with fill flash. Very busy with all those branches so even with a relatively shallow DOF I had to blur a lot in PP and crop tightly to show off his little punk 'do. Actually could have used a smidge more DOF to get all of him in focus but then I would have had even more PP to do. Darn birds hang out in very busy places! But at least the trees haven't leafed out yet; then things get really difficult.
Gotta love Downy Woodpeckers! Tight surrounding are always a problem but sometimes you can use it to your advantage by having the branches frame the subject. Most of the time you just get a mess like you say and have to toss the shot or do some serious cloning.
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