These photos were taken during a weekend workshop at the Ramrod Ranch near Soledad, CA http://www.incredibletravelphotos.blogspot.com/). I had a great time and plan to go back next year, highly recommended! It was my first attempt shooting from a blind which allowed got us very close to the pond. Some of the birds were very tolerant (or oblivious) of our presence, but others in particular the Titmouse and Wrentit were very nervous and rarely stood still.

The Gray Fox was a bonus early on the 2nd morning. Not wanting to make too much noise with many bursts of photos I bumped the ISO to 6400 to maintain a reasonable shutter speed. Maybe I won't do that next time, I had to use aggressive noise reduction which has unfortunately reduced fine detail as well. Always learning...

All photos were taken with a Canon 5Dmk2 and 500mm f/4 L IS Lens mostly used wide open. For many shots a 1.4x tele-converter was also used. Fill flash using a 580EX2 and Better Beamer was used for all bird photos with a CP-E4 battery pack to speed recharging. It is easy to see why bird photographers like the 600mm and now the 800mm lens, the smaller birds really are, even at close to minimum focussing distance. Fortunately the 5Dmk2 has plenty of mega-pixels to support cropping.