Early bird

Green Woodpecker (Picus viridis) - Essex, UK
Canon 7D, 600/f4, Gitzo 3530LSV, Wimberley WH2.
Manual exposure mode f8 ;1/125, iso 1600.
RAW image processed in ACR; sharpened in Photoshop CS5; noise reduction using Noiseware Professional Imagenomic; full frame.

I've been photographing green woodpeckers quite a lot recently. They tend to visit very early in the morning and then again, late morning. They often attract a bit of attention from a clan of magpies and get rather aggressive if one of the magpies try its luck.

I usually use flash to provide some fill and balance the light from the sky, but in this instance I dialled up the ISO to try and capture the dawn light and sky colour. Never having shot the 7D at ISO 1600 before, I am was pleasantly surprised and reasonably happy with the quality of the resulting images.