Thanks, it was very overcast and gloomy by the time these were taken at 4:45.

The skies have been overcast and dreary for a long while here in NE Ohio, so you have to take what you are given to photograph the harriers. This forced me to shoot at ISO 6400 to try to catch them in flight. I used shutter speed 1/1250 and f/5.6 on my Nikon 200-500 lens and D500. Here are three that I liked after cleaning up in Lightroom and Topaz Denoise AI.

Northern Harriers

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Nice set of photos, Jack! Always a good time at the dam!

This is my final set of birds that I have seen in the area this month. Not all pictures are great quality (as evidenced by the blue-winged teal and mallard pictures in the last set or the barred owl in this set.), but they show the difficulty of getting birds to cooperate, so I included them. :-)

American Tree sparrow

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Female northern harrier

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American kestrel hunting

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Red-headed Woodpecker

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Male Northern Harrier (Gray Ghost)

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Great Blue Heron

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An uncooperative barred owl

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Yellow-rumped warbler

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Wild turkeys (Appropriate for Thanksgiving)

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Bluebird (of happiness?)

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Here is a continuation of the variety of birds in our area this November.

Tundra swan family

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Killdeer in the snow

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Horned lark showing his "horns"

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Pipits migrating through

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White-breasted nuthatch with sunflower seed

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Tufted titmouse

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Northern shoveler and green-winged teal

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Blue-winged teal

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Mallard couple

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White-throated sparrow

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Thanks to all who have looked at this set of pictures and a special thanks to those who have commented!

Here are a few of the birds that we were fortunate to see in our area in the first half of November.

Northern Cardinal

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Red-bellied Woodpecker

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Hairy woodpecker

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Great Egret (The last one that I saw in Novermber.)

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Red-tailed hawk

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Sandhill Crane Family

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Rough-legged Hawk

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Swamp Sparrow

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Song Sparrow

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Bald Eagle

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I also use a Wacom to edit photos. I would not go back to a mouse. It only took a short time to get used to using it. There are you tube videos about its use, including some by Phlearn that I would recommend looking at before purchasing.

This thread can be closed now! Alan Hudina was kind enough to send me his tripod collar at only the cost of shipping! He did this without drama, just out of the kindness of his heart. I am grateful that that there are people like Alan on this forum. He did not question my intelligence about using google to search for a screw, which by the way is a specialty screw, not a Lowes type thumb screw which I would have had to machine to do the same thing this specialty screw does. He did not accuse me of bashing a good company, which I didn't do. I just stated a fact that Nikon would not SELL me a screw to fix a problem that I had, whether created by me or not. I do think this is ridiculous given that they will sell a tripod collar and the appropriate screw for that collar for a collar that fits a different lens, but won't sell the screw or collar for the 200-500. I don't feel that is bashing Nikon, it is just stating an aggravation with an inconsistency within their parts sales. No, Alan didn't do any of this, he just volunteered to send me a collar that he wasn't using. Perhaps we could all learn a lesson from his kindness. Thanks again, Alan!!!

Wow!! Great shot!!

Google Steve Perry and read as much as you can of his excellent tutorials and watch his videos on how to become a better wildlife photographer. He is a Nikon shooter, but most of his work applies to all brands of cameras. I buy all of his ebooks because they are so good, but he posts lots of free stuff. Good luck!

Amen to that!!

billnikon, I am not going to get in an argument with someone that wants to be a troll, but to answer your question, I was just tightening it one day and the head just spun. Upon taking it apart I found the plastic head was cracked. I superglued it, but that was a temporary fix. gtilford, you are exactly right about why I don’t want to send it in, when I could just fix it myself. I use a long Fusion plate with my current foot and like the set up, so that is why I would like an original equipment Nikon foot. Thanks for your replies (even Bill, since he reminds me what is so great about anonymity of the internet), but I am still interested in a foot. :-)

I know that many people replace the tripod foot of the Nikkor 200-500. Does anyone have the original laying around that would be willing to sell it? Please let me know as I am looking for one. The plastic screw head on mine cracked and Nikon will not just sell me the screw to replace it. They say that I have to send it in to get it repaired. How ridiculous!!

Had it remained in the area, I am sure hundreds would have come and from great distances. As it was perhaps 75 to a hundred birders did come to see it. The story is pretty interesting. The 11 year old son of a good friend of my daughter and son-in-law saw the bird by their pond. He didn’t know what it was, so he asked his 13 year old brother and they started looking through bird books. The older brother thought it might be a Limpkin and he asked his dad. The father said it looked like a Limpkin, but those don’t live in Ohio, so they contacted me to verify that it was indeed a Limpkin. I didn’t get there until 7:00 in the evening and once I saw that it was indeed a Limpkin, I asked my son to post it to the appropriate Facebook birding pages to get the word out and I contacted a couple of local birders as well. The 75-100 people showed up from about 7:30 to 9:00.