Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/ Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron fishing

Reason: Another wonderful image from Acarpentier.
Proposed caption: The Great Blue Heron is a wading bird in the heron family, common over most of North and Central America as well as the West Indies and the Galápagos Islands. Great blue herons can be found in a range of habitats, in fresh and saltwater, but always near bodies of water. They feed by using their long legs to wade into the water and then catch fish or frogs with their long bill.
Articles this image appears in: Great Blue Heron
Creator: User:Acarpentier

Support as nominator Cacophony (talk) 06:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support Excellent image! stand by for complaints on the caption! --Fir0002 06:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support. A little blown highlights here, some blurry feathers there, but more than made up for by the fish!--Here T oHelp 12:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Great action shot!--Mbz1 (talk) 13:24, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support Weak because of general messyness, support because it's a good catch! ;-) And yes, Fir is right, we need a caption... --Janke | Talk 14:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It's a shame the fish is so small, and the image lacking in colour contrast, but on the other hand, it's a great wildlife shot that captures the atmosphere of the environment. It works for me. Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:33, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There was a discussion on Commons re color de-saturation of the bg, but it appears this might be the unedited version. If not, I'd really prefer the original. --Janke | Talk 07:07, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is the original, I think. --mikaul^talk 18:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weak support per Janke and Samsara. --jjron (talk) 07:54, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Great "moment" shot. Colours look really natural on my monitor, and I really like the setting: the mess adds to the shot for me. Could maybe do with a selective sharpen to pop it out a bit but it looks every inch an FP as it is. --mikaul^talk 18:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support per mikaul --LucaG (talk) 20:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support While the background does make it look a little noisy in the thumbnail, that's only a thumbnail problem; at any reasonable resolution the background is so obviously blurred that the bird stands out quite well indeed. However the caption needs work. It's obvious just from this image that Great Blue's don't "spear" their food; this bird is tossing the fish after it caught it, to arrange the fish longitudinally to go down the bird's gullet. The bird did catch the fish with its long bill, but it was done like using forceps, not by impaling it with a spear. Enuja (talk) 02:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. The article could use some work also. I changed "spear" to "catch" for a simple fix but the caption probably needs even more work. Cacophony (talk) 04:04, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: Doesn't do it for me, there is absolutely no sense of scale, these birds are something like five feet tall, this one looks about two feet tall, more like a Little Blue Heron. I just can't tell how big it is at all, which hurts its encyclopedic nature. Good shot otherwise. IvoShandor (talk) 05:17, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Great shot. I cannot understand the assertion that there's no sense of scale... you've got water droplets, water turbulence, leaves, grass, and the fish... all work together to give an impression of the size of the bird. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, surely we can get a better picture of Great Blues. IMO this one just doesn't do them justice. D-rew (talk) 04:19, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Le Grand Heron.jpg MER-C 02:29, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]