Stephan,

Yes I am on a tripod. My thinking was that the longer I spend with these birds, the more I will get used to their flight patterns and be able to anticipate their movements. I tried, the first day out, to go handheld with one bird. It didn't work so well, but if I remember correctly that bird was the kestrel which is extremely fast and agile. My next time out I'm going to do half tripod, half handheld on your recommendation. We'll see how that turns out.

Also, the auto iris, in theory, would have been better on an overcast day when it's LESS contrasty. I'm in the Carolinas where the sun is very strong. The second day out I was able to use a polarizer and the built in NDs to keep the exposure around f4. The problem is, like I said earlier, when I went off axis to where I set the pola, the image got very dirty, as if the lens was picking up all the imperfections on the filter. Odd...