Hamish Macarthur-Onslow, Whistling Kite (September Theme: Birds)

I'm not an expert bird watcher or ornithologist... but I've been told.... that this is a Whistling Kite. One of Australia's many "birds of prey". I shot this "in-flight" moment with a Canon 40D and a Canon EF100-400 (original version) lens. I was told that the 40D had poor noise handling, and that this lens wasn't very good, but I find that it worked pretty well, despite the controversy and opinions surrounding it. This was cropped because the bird moved a little erratically in flight... I think I can forgive it. ;~) I then cleaned the image noise up a little.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.