Lady Nightjar

Canon EOS 7D, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM MK II @ 200mm, Aperture Priority @ f/8 (1/200 sec), -2/3 EV, ISO 400, Handheld, JPEG from RAW, About 50% of Full Frame

Before I add some text related to this photo, I just like to express my thanks and appreciation to all of you who commented on my previous picture posts. I'd also ask you to please understand that I'm not currently able to add comments in kind on the most recent photos that each of you have posted up (as is my usual practice), as a few days ago both my iMac desktop as well as my main external hard-drive died, and I lost ALL data, files, and photos I had stored on them ;^.

Fortunately I have a few smaller storage devices that I had the foresight to fill up with as many of my most important photos I've taken over the past year, so all is not lost, however, now that I've had a new hard-drive installed in my iMac I'm in the process of transferring all the photos and files I still have and cataloging and key-wording again everything in Lightroom, which is a real pain to say the least.

Anyhow, without further ado, here's some background on the image above:

Following on from the last post, this here's the female Madagascar Nightjar one of my trackers - with eyes worthy of a Peregrine Falcon! - spotted early one morning on together with her mate almost perfectly camouflaged among the dead leaves laying on the ground of the spiny tree forest in Southeastern Madagascar.

Crawling forward on my belly inch by inch, I was able to get pretty close to the male, who though obviously aware of my presence wasn't perturbed. His wife, however, was a little more nervous and sprang off to one side, so I wasn't able to shoot them together. Having taken a few shots of the male I slowly edged backward, then even more slowly to the left to capture a shot or two of the lady, with her eye wide open watching my every movement, then soon as I got this one, after a quick word of appreciation to both subjects as well as Mother Nature, I gradually crawled backward so as not to startle her more, got up and thanked my tracker :^)

Critique and comments always welcome.