Miss January...

Ms. January (yeah, doesn't make much sense and I can't even tell you the sex of this 'ere bird, but I also can't seem to avoid the joke...)  This is the featured shot for January in my 2012 Calendar. 

I shot this in Santa Cruz at Natural Bridges State Beach where the local birds seemed quite used to people getting close - that allowed me the rare opportunity to shoot this Egret landing quite near me.

Great Egret Catching Lunch...

I got down to the Cosumnes River Preserve today with my long lens setup (Tamron SP 400mm F4 + 1.7x AFTC + K20D) and wandered around for a couple hours not getting close to birds :p... Then, almost back to the truck, I saw this egret along the path. Since the last egret I tried to approach had bugged out when I got within a couple hundred yards, I decided to take it slow, only to watch aghast as a couple of birdwatchers walked right up to it from the other direction... It turns out this bird was so engrossed in the hunt that it didn't even register the presence of the people. I wasn't able to get a close as I wanted before the action started and when it did, I plunked down my tripod and started firing (filled the buffer a couple times in the process)...

Stalking Lunch...



Got 'im...






Look how close he walked to the folks on the trail (well, there's some compression from the 700mm lens... those feet are probably 10-15 feet behind the egret).










Then I grabbed my 5DII with the 100-400mm L at f/7.1 and stalked in a bit closer before he launched away...

cosumnes river preserve...

Got to check out the Cosumnes River Preserve yesterday and shoot a few photos. I was using the Sigma 50-500mm (the Bigma) on a Kenko 1.5x teleconverter on my Pentax K20D, and while the results weren't universally good, they weren't universally bad either - I did get some sharp photos, and it was a good time...

I'm no bird expert, so feel free to fill me in on names I don't know or correct me on what I got wrong ;).

Here are some of the better shots...

(click to see a larger version)...

Egret


Black Necked Stilt (identified by Marc L, a real bird photographer. - Thanks Marc.)





Red Wing Blackbird


Sandhill Cranes


???


Great Blue Heron