Hello.
To celebrate my first ever photographs of a woodpecker, I felt like sharing two of my shots. Don´t know if two pictures are allowed under the same post, but if not I’ll edit it.
DSCF6708.RAF (31.6 MB)
DSCF6985.RAF (27.4 MB)
DSCF6985.RAF.xmp (11.0 KB)
DSCF6708.RAF.xmp (13.7 KB)
Bonus video of the woodpecker in action: Woodpecker - YouTube
License: Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.
DSCF6985.jpg.out.pp3 (14,3 KB)
Like this one; I have an image of the same species, in flight, dumb luck…
I think the wood and all the branches add compositional interest, so I cropped to put both in what I thought was the best arrangement. Also, added a bit of sharpening to compensate a bit for the short depth-of-field:
It is welcome! Thanks for sharing!
The background of the first one has the texture of a shower curtain. 
PS - I have never been comfortable with the term lesser. We don’t use that for human beings: why should we do that to animals?
Must be quite a challenge to get such a small bird in flight. I think so far I have only gotten one or two. Great edit!
I think it works pretty well. With a more refined mask it could look even better (A bit on the bottom and the top)
Unfortunately there were many branches behind him and this lens tends struggles with that on medium distances, I have quite a large collection with a similar effect.
I think ‘smaller’ would be a good replacement since it’s a more direct translation of the word ‘minor’ used in the latin name of the species.
DSCF6985.RAF.xmp (13.7 KB)
Really, dumb luck would have it. I heard the bugger outside our cabin, so I grabbed my camera and headed out the door. Sure enough, just across the way was he, hammering on an aspen. I slowly walked toward it, bringing up the camera, and he flew, so I finished raising the camera and squeezed one off, almost not aiming. Got this:
I think the Z 6 IBIS saved it…
It looks good, I like the motion in the wings, gives a great perception of movement. One of those rare shots, great reflexes 
@lightlover A little more headroom would have been nice but otherwise I like the closeup.
@ggbutcher The background sharpening or whatever is happening there is distracting.
Just double-checked, no sharpening other than my standard export sharpening. I think it’s 1) the background itself is a jumbled mess of shrub branches, and 2) increased contrast by the tone curve.
That whatever is probably (2) then. Does rawproc have local masking capabilities?
Thanks, i really cropped too much.
