It is Friday and that means feathers.

I made a brief run to the tree in the lake to see if I could get some birds in flight practice with the Nikon D850. I’ve had this camera for 6 months and it has less than a thousand clicks on it. With my trip to Monte Vista coming next week, and with the good local weather, it was a good morning to get out and practice a little. I’d hate to get to Monte Vista with an out-of-whack lens calibration and rusty skills.

Sad news though. The tree in the lake has fallen over, along with most of the other trees in the lake. There were no Great Blue Heron to be found. Just ducks and cormorants. A sad day, as that lake has been a bonanza for photographing great blue heron over the years. Now I’ll have to drive a bit further to photograph those birds in the future.

Looks like the lens calibration is pretty good on the 200-500mm VR mounted on the D850. I’ll be packing my D500 too, which in all honesty has a better auto-focus than the D850, so I’ll probably be shooting sandhill cranes with the D500 most of the time in Monte Vista.