Another morning spent at Sunol regional park yielded these images of a chesnut-backed chichadee

and a Nuttall's woodpeckerHummingbird feathers never cease to amaze me. Look at what a difference he make just by turning his head!













All of these images above were made with my new homemade flash bracket seen below.
The big advantage of this is that it gets the flash up high enough that it can be used for fill light without the evil "demon eye" (the animal equivalent of red eye - see the cow below for an extreme example of demon-eyes) that otherwise plagues flash users. It cost about $10 from the hardware store and a couple hours work versus several hundred to buy something that does the same!