Eastern Kingbird

I saw this eastern kingbird fly into a tree, then dive into a field to catch something and then fly with that something to the top of a dead limb. It sat there with its catch for a few moments while I took its photo and then took off with it again. I caught it in flight as it just about reached the edge of the frame, but it was in focus and I love its little feets sticking out behind its wings, so I had to blip it.

Kingbirds are flycatchers, members of the Tyrant Flycatcher family. Our phoebes and pewees and a variety of other birds with "flycatcher" in their name are all members of the same family. Some of them are very hard to tell apart and virtually indistinguishable unless you hear their song. The kingbird is more easily recognizable. Oddly, it was a bird I was completely unaware of until about 6 years ago - even though they're very common. I clearly wasn't paying attention before I got "into" birding. Some of the Tyrants in Central and South America are quite colorful - but ours that breed here in North America lean towards drab, with a few exceptions (the western kingbird, for one).

Also - I have recently become enamored of the filter called "poster edges" in Photoshop. It seems to make the subject interesting but mess more with the background than the foreground. Although in this case, the background is just straight blue sky, which the filter has rendered sort of splotchy. The "before" is the extra.