Addendum to Recent Grasshopper Sparrow post

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     Frustrated with my inability to get optically close to the Grasshopper Sparrows (as I indicated in the July 5 post, the images were seriously cropped with attendant lack of detail), I put a 2x teleconverter on the 500mm f/4 lens, calibrated the autofocus fine tune adjustment for the D500 camera/500mm f/4 lens/2x teleconverter combination and went looking for more Grasshopper Sparrows. Three images acquired with that combination are shown below.   

Click on images for a larger view.

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David Sparks

I retired in 2005 after 40 years of research and teaching at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (24 years), the University of Pennsylvania (8 years) and the Baylor College of Medicine (8 years). Photography is my retirement hobby.

Nature photography, especially bird photography, combines a number of things that I really enjoy: bird-watching, being outdoors, photography, travel, messing about with computers, and learning new skills and concepts.  I now spend much of my time engaged in these activities.

David Sibley in the preface to The Sibley Guide to Birds wrote "Birds are beautiful, in spectacular as well as subtle ways; their colors, shapes, actions, and sounds are among the most aesthetically pleasing in nature."  My goal is to acquire images that capture the beauty and uniqueness of selected species as well as images that highlight the engaging behaviors the birds exhibit.