Ecology

[Radu Dinu]

Taking a bath together, they saved water !

[DanK]

If you look at the histogram, it will confirm that you have blown out some of the whites--that is, they are so bright that there is no detail left. Unfortunately, simply exposing less would be a problem because the image extends all the way from pure black to pure white, so you would clip blacks if you exposed less. And because birds move, exposure bracketing isn't an option.

It's not clear from the image why this happened. It could be that because of the bright sunlight, the image simply exceeds the dynamic range of the camera. That will depend on the camera; comparing even high-end modern cameras, there are differences of as much as 3 stops between the dynamic range they can capture. It may also be because of how you captured the image. Did you shoot JPEG? All JPEG shots are processed in camera, and the processing can make this worse, e.g., by boosting contrast. Also, if you shoot raw, you can usually recover slightly areas that seem slightly blown out in the histogram and in the initial rendering of the image.