Mating White Tail Kites

D300s
600mm + 1.4 TC
F/6.3
1/800
Aperture Priority
Exposure Compensation -.67
Metering Mode Pattern
ISO 500
White Balance Cloudy
Distance 84.10 meters
Cropped 68% (only 32 % of image left)
Wimberly Head on tripod

Image taken February 18th, Southern California. It's that time of year again when the mating and nesting starts to take over. Several sets of white tail kites are mating and preparing their nests and I was fortunate enough to get a shot with some great light. This was a very cloudy day (note the black clouds in the background) when a ray of light came through the clouds for about 5 minutes and it just so happen to coincide with this pair of kites mating. They mated several times that day but after this initial sequence the light was so poor that these were the only images captured that were decent. There were a couple of food exchanges as well and I hope to get some good light for an exchange or two this weekend.
This was shot in landscape mode and cropped from both sides as well as from both the top and bottom leaving me only 32% of the original image. My large file held up well and I'm hoping for the same with these small files posted here. Hope you like these. Comments and suggestions always welcomed and appreciated. Larger version included.