Green Heron - why is he bristling?

[mrsisu]

taken in Florida Feb 07. This Green Heron landed on a stick very close to me. Was moving around on the stick and looking very normal until another Green Heron landed a few feet away. All of a sudden this birds feathers bristled up - looked the human equivalent of goose bumps (I think). The second Green Heron left pretty quickly and this bird returned to normal. What do you all think?

[rpk717]

Don,

Beautiful bird, I really like the "bristling", I guess you could say the other heron "ruffled this guy's feathers". I think it may look a little better if you darken it a bit.

[Photobiologist]

Defense/competition posture to look bigger.

Cool picture - it is so hard to get these little guys out in the open where you can get a shot at all, much less a really cool behavior shot like this one! Congrats!

[mrsisu]

Here is the same image, with a change in white balance and made darker. Think this is a more effective image now. Do you agree?

[rpk717]

Don,

I think that improved it a good bit. The colors look more like they should to me. Thanks for posting the revision with an explanation what you did.

[jckegley]

The contrast looks better on the second version and it looks sharper on the second version, but I am not too sure about the color for the overall picture on the second version. For some reason I like the color on the first photo, but I like the contrast and sharpness on the second photo.

Good picture regardless.

[Photobiologist]

I like both versions - I thought I still liked the first version better, but after looking at the subtleties of the colors in the back feathers of the second version, I think I like the second version better...