Have been wanting to shoot this little guy for a while and finally he played along.
This little Green Woodhoopoo has been living in the same dead Leadwood tree for almost two years now. Every night on our way back to the lodge he sticks his head out so that the spotlight catches the bright red bill. Normally he just gives us a quick look before pulling back into his wooden bedroom. Yesterday however he decided to play along and actually pose for a picture or two.
One of my non photographer guests held the spotlight so that the centre, and brightest part of the light, just missed the little guy and from there we were able to get at least a few frames before he disappeared. I wanted to include some of the wood as the texture works quite well. My camera is normally on Auto White Balance as I shoot in RAW so, as with the vulture shot from yesterday, I changed to spot metering and fired away. When I opened the image in Lightroom there was a very slight red cast, the result of Auto White Balance meets spotlight, that I bothered me a bit. All I did was change my White Balance to Tungsten, which is the closest to the spotlight we were using, which removed the color cast and rendered the image exactly like we saw it.
Lessons from this post? Shoot in RAW, don’t be afraid to play with your White Balance during post processing, look for texture and don’t put your spotlight flat out on a little Green Woodhoopoo who is trying to sleep!
See ya tomorrow! 
Gerry
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what a beautiful creature. thanks for the treats!!!
You got him nice one ! Everytime I look for him I get a squirrel..:)