Verditer Flycatcher with and without Flash

Flash is an essential accessory in bird photography, especially in a dark canopy tropical forest like Malaysia. A better beamer or flash extender is frequently used to enhance the reach of the flash with a telephoto lens. How much flash output (+ or -) to use is an art you have to learn. Different bird plumage reacts differently. The default setting of my flash is at -1 and I manually adjust it according to the distance of the bird and background lighting.
The most common evidence of the flash of a bird is a red-eye or silver-eye effect. The further the bird from the camera the more noticeable the effect. We can minimize this with a flash bracket that shifts the flash from the centre of the lens.

The Verditer Flycatcher above perched at an electric cable about 20 feet from me. With the flash at minus 1 setting, the neck and breast colour are almost burned out.
Canon 50D fires in fast continuous shooting at 6 fps, the flash can't keep up, so I have flash and unflash pictures. With that, we can compare which one is the true plumage of the bird.
In this case, the un-flash is the true colour of this male Verditer Flycatcher.

Verditer Flycatcher (Eumyias thalassina)

Location: Jelai Resort, Fraser's Hill, Pahang.