Avian IOTW John Gustalla for week ending 1/21/2011- Preening Kestrel

[Roman Kurywczak]

Congratulations John Gustalla for your image "Preening Kestrel" being chosen as the Avain Image of the Week for the week ending 1/21/2011!!!

American Kestrel Male preening at the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, Irvine, CA, taken with my (newly-acquired) excellent used copy of the Canon 500mm f/4 IS lens (plus the 1.4X extender).

The pictured Kestrel was very cooperative, moving among several low perches quite close to me before settling on the truncated tree shown in the photo. He spent a few minutes preening before flying off, allowing me to capture a series of nice images.

Canon 7D with the Canon 500mm f/4 IS lens and the Canon 1.4X Extender II.
Manual; f/8 at 1/1600sec; ISO 400. Tripod/Wimberley II.

Thanks for looking,

John

[Randy Stout]

John:

This one if really fine!

Congrats.

Randy

[Steve Kaluski]

Outstanding John.

Steve

[denise ippolito]

John, Outstanding image and a well deserved win!!

[Andrew Merwin]

Superlative!

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Congrats John !

[Morkel Erasmus]

congrats on this one - fine image!

[Indranil Sircar]

Outstanding image, John. Congratulations and a well deserved win!

[John Guastella]

Thanks so much for choosing my image as IOTW! Unexpected and quite gratifying. I'm still a beginner at this and I have to say that I've learned more about the art of bird photography from the BPN forum than all of the other resources on the web combined. So, thanks to everyone for their critiques and for sharing their expertise.

Best regards,

John Guastella

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautiful image John, Congratulations..

[Vivaldo Damilano]

Congrates on a beautiful image, well deserved.

[Grace Scalzo]

Congrats, John. I missed this during the week, so glad I got to see it. A wonderful image.

[Grant Atkinson]

Congrats John, I just saw this image now, very strong shot, well done
Grant