Thank you SB, Carolina, Sailormom and Annie.

Thanks Kpmac, Linda and Jerry.

Sandhill chick (aka Colt) showing off its beautiful plumage. The last picture compares its feather with its parent's.

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Trevi Fountain 8pm at night. You need a fast lens, steady hands, maybe a monopod, but no tripod. Definitely hold on to your wallet. Same for most tourist spots in Rome.

Suggest you bring a monopod. Easy to carry and can also use for hiking. B&H has a Mefoto monopod on sale

Thank you Sailorsmom

Thank you Jeff.

Mimilport, these are taken with a Nikon D7000 and a Nikon 55-300mm lens.

My regular travel gear is Nikon D750 and 28-300mm. My Africa trip started late last month, with rumors of electronic ban, so I decided to take my backup camera instead (turned out unnecessary). But I am impressed with the quality of pictures it took. However these pictures were taken in ideal settings - still objects and good lights. With birds in flight, and low lights, I got frustrated with the shortcomings of the D7000 - especially slow focus and high ISO noise levels, compared to the D750.

Thank you Jerry.

Thank you RR51. Locals call these Banana Birds, for obvious reasons.

Thank you all for your comments.

Yellow Billed Hornbill and Ground Hornbill. Shot at Kruger National Park in South Africa.

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I was in Machu Picchu last year in August. I took the train from Cusco to Aquas Calientes. Stayed in Aquas Calientes for two days and each morning took a 30 minute bus to Machu Picchu, return in evening. 95% of tourists do this. There is only one hotel in Machu Picchu, but hard to book and very expensive. If you stay more than 2 days you might consider this, but book early. Here's a few suggestions

1. This is peak travel season. You will run into many many tourists. To take good pictures with no people you either stay in that hotel, or take the first bus up there so that you are ahead of most people.
2. First bus is around 5:30am. You need to line up 45 minutes ahead to get to the first buses. Lots of people all over.
3. You need both wide angle while you are at the site, and zoom while you hike up and look back down. But you also want to travel light. High altitude, uneven steps, and steep incline all make for tough hiking. Avoid frequent lens changes. I took my Nikon D750 with 28-300mm and found that perfect for me.
4. In my two days there were fog in early morning, but lifted very soon. I might be lucky but I don't believe tripod is needed.

I use Faststone together with Corel PSP x9. Its a good combination. You have to load and organize raw files into Windows directories, as recommended by Faststone. Faststone can then scan, preview and simple edit the raw files, and with one click, can launch PSP for more complex pp.

Windows file system for organization. Faststone to view. And Paintshop Pro x9 to edit. Works great for my purposes.