you have no idea how hard this shot was chris! first, the auto focus wouldnt work cause there was too much stuff in the way, then i was sort of sit/crouching on a 45 degree gravely slope AND the birds were very poorly lit.... this is manually focused, as are many of the bird shots i do. unless the birds are large and in the open direct sunlight they are hard to get a good auto focus on unfortunately. its good pratcise trying to doit manually tho