What better way to learn to photograph birds in flight than to visit the generously bird populated waterways of Florida? Mostly birds, but a few people too, all shot with the Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS. All-too-brief stops at the Venice Rookery, Ding Darling, Everglades, Wakadahatchee and Green Cay Reclamation areas, and Merritt Island. Next time we're going to pick ONE location and stay there several days since the best shooting is done in the very early morning or late afternoon, preferably on a not-too-sunny day. By the way, I was having trouble getting the lens to focus starting at 400mm until someone suggested setting the focus search function to "On" in custom function III in my 40D.
The background "bokeh" from the 100-400 lens was not always pleasing. On several of the images posting in this gallery I've used Shan Canfield's (Photoshop Mama) Focus Blur action. I found it to be the best and fastest way of making backgrounds more attractive, and it didn't require serious selection work first. http://www.photoshopmama.net/legal_focusblurs.html (If the background looks bad, it was processed before I realized the action would improve things so easily and nicely. I have been soundly trounced about keeping a UV filter on this lens, in particular, and told that backgrounds will improve if I remove it, so I will be making a serious of test images with and without the filter to see how much of a difference its presence makes.
IF YOU SPOT ANY INCORRECT IDENTIFICATIONS, please correct me! I am a novice birder.