Who could resist him?

This is for Legacy, who adores cardinals but doesn't have them where she lives. This is also for everyone who likes red. He's magnificent, isn't he?

I'm finding my stride with this lens. It is slower to focus than Big Daddy, but now that I am getting used to that, it's giving me some good images. I took this through the living room window fairly early this morning. Poor light so I cranked the ISO up to 1600 which allowed me to shoot at 1/1600 to freeze the motion. I lightened this up a bit, and cropped it. (And the spots aren't dust on my sensor ... they are more of the dreaded SNOW flakes in this winter that never seems to end.)

In between work and phone calls, I managed to get a good selection of shots today, mostly birds in flight. You may have noticed that I've been posting a lot of flight images recently - no coincidence there as I have been trying to improve my skill in this area. I've developed some effective tricks which has have helped - mainly doing a better job of anticipating when a bird is about to take flight from a perch. If you'd like to see some of today's other shots, I've posted 8 on Flickr, starting HERE.

Good news from Tamron - they have started work on Big Daddy and will get him back out to me by Friday. The bad news is that it is costing more than I'd hoped. However, even better news on the Nikon 105mm - the company who insured it accepted the claim and emailed me a shipping label and it went out to them today via FedEx. They are covering the cost to either replace or repaid - no cost to me. Probably be about 10 days on that one. I've ordered a neoprene cover for Big Daddy - it is supposed to protect against minor knocks and bangs. Can't hurt and may help.

Hope you are all having a marvelous Hump Day!

Debbi