I was amazed at the number of Catbirds at Magee Marsh this spring, but they are really pretty common anywhere in the east. This bird is at Higgbee Beach in Cape May, in mid-afternoon. Catbirds are another hard-to-photograph-through-the-spotting-scope bird. They are almost always buried in a tangle of brush and branches and pretty constantly on the move. Which is were the second camera comes into play. This bird was just curious enough about what I was doing to sit up look for a few seconds, and I was able to get on him. This is the Canon SX40HS at full optical zoom plus 1.5x digital extender for the equivalent field of view of a 1260mm lens on a full frame DSLR. 1/200th @ f5.8 @ ISO 160…so pretty good light, as the detail in the breast feathers testifies. 

Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.