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Thanks for the info. I will check it out.

Meanwhile...back at Flamingo...

This guy in the picture below, we called Fearless Fosdick because we shot this pic out the car window right next to him.

I'm planning to go visit the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine this spring to take pictures of the bird rookery there. It is a place that SWAMPSNIPER told me about. I went last year -- marvelous place for taking closeup pictures of wild herons, egrets, storks, and roseates. I could have almost hit some of the birds with my long lens.

After spending half a day there I'm thinking of heading to South Florida. I've never been to Flamingo. Is that a place you recommend? Are there other places in South Florida you recommend?

There is a feature in Photoshop Elements 9 that lets you very easily lighten dark areas (or darken the lightest areas) without affecting the rest of the picture. Their software must be programmed to adjust the tone curves just so. You can probably achieve that in Digital Photo Professional by trial and error, but it is done with simple slider bars in PE9 to control the amount of adjustment you want.

Your eagle and hawk pictures are great. The eagle pictures might benefit by lightening the dark areas of the birds some, at least the wings, with the slider bars in PE9.

The only eagle pictures I have were taken at Merritt Island NWR last year. I say a distant bird flying and took its picture. I did not realize it was a bald eagle or that it was carrying a fish until I dowloaded the picture on my computer at home. Here is that picture:

After processing the picture with Digital Photo Professional last spring, the wings of this bird were dark. I just now lightened the wings with PE9 without affecting the rest of the picture. Now I can see that the wings are brown. This is a crop from the original picture. The bird was so far away, I did not realize it was an eagle until I saw the white tail on the computer.