Went looking for eagles but they must have left since the daffodils came up. But there were Herons, Egrets, and Pelicans plenty, here are some. It seems it was a great day for fishing! Comments welcome.
D300, 70-300vr Nikkor, D2x ColorMode2, ISO 400
picture selection by View NX and processing by NX, filtration by NIK
Thank you all for the kind comments, the 70-300vr only goes out so far and the cropping allows only so much leeway. But I got lucky in that the birds came by close enough to where the 300 end actually delivered some shots.
The picture selection was by Nikon View NX and processing by Nikon Capture NX, filtration by NIK
I left the exif information so it is accessible with tools in the browser such as Opanda. The fstop was 5.6 for #1.
Thanks Harsha, the AF works very well, for the birds in open areas I use the 3d tracking and it incerases my workflow with more pictures to process. One good thing about the 3d tracking is that I just point th eviewfinder at the bird and teh camera finds it fast and focuses. It also tracks real well. Those flying birds were going by at a good clip and the wind was very gusty so they were moving fast at times.
With one of the 400-600 AFS vr lenses I can only imagine that the perfromance would be incredible.
