I was recently sitting on the back deck enjoying the arrival our deep blue irises when a woodpecker stopped by the bird feeder. (What's up with that, anyway? I thought those guys ate bugs they dug out of the sides of trees.) I had my Canon EOS-350D with me and the Canon EF135 mm F2L USM lens. This lens is wonderfully fast on autofocus and crystal clear; here's a few shots that I grabbed before the woodpecker flew off. The shots are at F/2 and shutter around 1/500.
"Hmmm, do I really want to eat this seed stuff? I mean, that's for FINCHES, you know?"
"Okay, maybe I'll just pull one out... let's see ... y'know, this'd be easier with a grub, they're squishier."
"Time to go!"
Still going... one of the Canon's nice features is the "hold down the shutter button and it fires several times a second" one. The only down-side is that you've got to buy somewhat more expensive CF cards as they've got to be fast in order to keep up with the camera.
A red headed woodpecker visited a few weeks later:
