I continue my efforts to capture photos of herons and egrets in flight whenever I can and here are a couple of shots from this past weekend of a flying egret.
In theory, it should be easy to photograph these birds—they are large and fly slowly—but the changing backgrounds and direction of flight has often made it tough to get the proper exposure and focus.
The egrets were gone all winter, but they are back now. I am hoping that I will continue to see them often enough to be able to get some better photos of them (or at least to try).
Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Great shot, how do you like the Sigma 135-400mm? I have an out of date Sigma 176-500mm and I’m looking for a new long lens..:-)
I bought the SIGMA used on ebay a bit over a month ago for a really good price. It too is an older lens. There is no image stabilization, auto focus is pretty slow, and manual focus is really tough to use. All that being said, it has given some pretty good images when conditions are right. If you have enough money, there are much better new long lenses. Interesting enough, my camera seems to think the lens I have is the 170-500 (at least the EXIF data indicates that’s what it is). I am still working on my technique and have learned I get best results if I shot at f8 or so, if I don’t extend out all the way to 400mm, if the light is good enough to keep my ISO down, and if I use a tripod. No real surprises there.
It’s nice to get the trees in the background of the aerial shots like you did. In practice I think it’s always a challenge to get birds in flight. Nobody gets good shots by accident!
These are much better results than I’ve gotten the few times that I tried!