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Some short-eared owls have been regularly seen at an old air base that has been a staple location in my photography history. I have spent little time there in recent years due to moving further away, and the Town which controls the airfield constantly erecting barriers and changing their policies on access to the runways (which are surrounded by hundreds of acres of grassland - a rare habitat on the island).

I cut out of work a bit early and joined about 15 other people in the cold this evening to try and get some photos. I initially was using my tripod but the bird was all over the place and the only way I would have a chance at getting something useable was to go handheld. Obviously there are some IQ problems with this image - but I would like to know what others think, especially because if you want a photo of a species like this hunting, well, you have to get lucky or deal with the horrible lighting (and I'm not interested in flash-banging owls)

Nikon D7100 300mm f4 + 1.7X TC HH in cropped mode
f/6.7 (minimum for this combo)
1/80s
ISO 3200 (really pushing it on the D7100)
-.33 EC (while this hurt my exposure a bit - it increased my SS, which was most important)

Cropped to remove some OOF vehicles/people, with some cloning done to remove some OOF manmade structures.

I went into this evening hoping to get a "blur" shot, knowing it was my best chance at getting anything and am pretty happy with this result. Obviously sharpening on the bird and noise reduction in CS5

- Luke

P.S. I am back for another year. Thanks to everyone who pushed me over the edge recently (especially with the comments on the snowy owl image), I have to put my money where my mouth is, so here I am!