The little show-off! Imagine how it must feel to open-out those lovely feathers. I was on hand with the 70-200mm f/4 to catch this moment. I thought of framing the bird closer then normal so focus in on the brilliant blue. On the post-processing side, I used a little Topaz Clean; it can make feathers and fur very dynamic. Personally I like to reduce the effect by applying a Gaussian blur to a duplicated layer.
They say that if you fall in love with avian photography you never go back; they have so much variety and life. A lifetime of chasing them, of gazing on their beauty; no camera can really portray such beauty.
These tools helped me work the magic: