How cute and beautiful this little creature is!
It took me a while to come up with something to my liking. The combination of fine detail, a bit of noise and strong colors I found hard to tame. I learned a few things on the way. And ‘stole’ @kofa DoS settings, thank you for that one (with the 45 iterations)!
Hope you like the result.
DSC07592_11.ARW.xmp (51.4 KB)
Not mine, found it in pixls years ago. Unfortunately, I do not remember the author.
Hello,
Here is my suggestion for this beautiful bird.
I used a noise-reduced version processed with Nind Denoise Raw.
I mainly used the “Contrast & Texture” and “3D Colorimetric Film” modules from my experimental branch.
With kind regards,
Christian
Wow! Do please tell us what software you used?
DSC07592.ARW.xmp (27,1 KB)
I saw the comment on your edit so I grabbed it and was checking it out… I did the usual working through but didn’t notice that your DorS was using the contrast eq mask and you had that before DorS… So I was enabling and disabling your denoising instance and seeing this big change in sharpening and I was like how is is this happening…then I realized the sequence and relationship…but I have to admit just for a min I was what black magic is that… 
I’m also regularly tricked by this relation when switching of a module with the original mask in it…
I wasn’t even that smart to make the connection at first look. I did notice that @kofa had used a custom module order and I thought it was something to do with that, so I reset it and then when I saw the modules reorder and break the image it clued me in as to what was going on…
As usual I was likely half asleep… 
OK; created the seamless texture using a few GIMP/G’MIC tricks (won’t elaborate; see image below) which took the bulk of the time since extractions not really my thing (i.e., just lousy at doing them even with tools built into G’MIC, it still requires a lot of patience which I really don’t have). I then used a modified Mathmap preset based on Moon to Panarama. You can click here for that link (and read through the followup there as well using composer which is the modified M2P preset I nearly always use for these type renders).
Thank you! A whole amazing topic of work which I have not encountered for a long time.
I love this “Crowded Birds!”
BTW, folks
Does this bird have a name? (I mean other than Phil or Mary, etc 
)
I guess it is some kind of kingfisher. Is it a youngster or just a very small species?
It does! See @Terry 's version above message #9…
It is called the Black-backed Dwarf-Kingfisher @Thad_E_Ginathom
This has come out beautiful!!
Nice little birdie!
What I did (if interesting):
DSC07592.ARW.xmp (12.2 KB)
I had a go at this earlier using Darktable and scrolling back through the challenge I saw it came out oddly similair to Zbyma’s one using Raw Therapee and Gimp.
We must have seen the thing the same way in our minds but come at it from a different direction
DSC07592_01.ARW.xmp (19.7 KB)
