The very popular app ebird has leaderboards, that alone pushes lying and exaggeration. Obviously I am not saying everyone is cheating, just that some are. I would personally bin such fripperies.

Feedback loops on more general wildlife social media also pushes a very different expectation of what is a good photograph and what is a hard bird to photograph/find.

If you chasing clout from that audience then its putting ever more pressure on to get ever closer, higher framed shots of the most photogenic birds, AI (re)generation to chase that becomes inevitable for those without morals

Thank you! Majority of my editing is with DXO Photolabs/NIK collection, as I prefer their noise reduction to Lightroom and I find the workflow to be a hell of a lot faster. This one has had a bit of additional post processing using AI removal to drop the bars. AI removal is still lacking in DXO, their masking is pretty much on par with Adobe now but not removal, I suspect that coming in the next major version.

I just want to see more preventative work done, there is plenty we could be doing for fire prevention if we allocated the (significant) budget and focus to it, woodland is so important to us on many levels let alone animals we share the spaces with.

We still have people trying to deny climate change in the UK, with the recent heatwave you had people saying it wasnt as bad as one in 76, just the dumbest shit.

Me, funny as that sounds, it went into the tree from its man made perch then gave me the evil eye as I think it thought my camera lens was a big eye

The water is lovely and blue there if you get lucky with the morning sun. Hes already got big gull vibes, hide yo chips

Its shameful the lack of coordinated action from both the US and Canadian government, there should be a proper joint emergency action before wildfire season starts, its not a surprise event and work can be done in advance to help alleviate the impact and spread

Ah, I always get confused with familiar relationships with animals

It was pretty quiet till it saw the camera, the little show off

Those are something else, best coming when it cooler as they do longer flight paths, they kept them pretty short hops yesterday due to how hot it was

Yeah they require so much work, but oh so rewarding!

I did wonder if you remotely close, still you could combine with the Scottish one, and the bird of prey place down the road from screech to see soon many birds, trip of a lifetime!

I want to go to Scotland for birding so bad, I have to get it sorted. This looks like another cracking place to go! I wish more places did photo shoots

Ha I shall treasure it!

I don't know where you based but they have at least three where I went. They have a great selection of owls, one of the best I have ever seen