Had a great Father's Day gift delivered almost in my lap as I was sipping early morning coffee out on my backyard deck. Having learned from past experience, I had my 20D ready-to-go with fresh Sandisk Extreme III 2.0 gig card, fully charged batteries, and 100-400mm L hooked on.

These uncropped pics were taken in a lilac bush only 8 - 10 feet away. Used centre focus, no flash, and given the shade set to 800 ISO, aperture priority set to f8 for clarity/DOF, all shots handheld with IS on. Composition not the greatest, but of approx 30 - 40 shots taken these were the best. Had to go to manual focus because the heavy shrubbery was "confusing" the AF (I've found in clear, open shooting circumstances that AF is far more accurate than my eyeball/judgement using MF. The viewfinder in these pics was fairly dark making it hard to accurately judge sharp focus - hence the pitiful 10% success rate of sharp/soft pics).

A little bit of CS2 post processing was done - a touch of saturation and brightening, following by USM of 100/3/0.

Cardinal photos: taken Sept 3, 2006. Friends Jim and Fran were over for an outdoor barbeque to celebrate Labour Day Weekend. Jim spotted a flash of red in the same lilac tree that the earlier woodpecker pics were taken. Using same equipment and photo technique described above, was able to get the pics below with Jim helping to keep an eye on this fellow as it flitted in the thick shrubbery. Hard to get any kind of a decent shot due to heavy shade, leaves, and branches making manual focus difficult as well as composition. However, this was by far the closest I've been able to get to this frequent, but elusive, visitor.