Wood ducks flying, Henne

I was out early this morning to check on how the local Great Blue Herons were faring in the Henne swamp near my house, and the rumor of Fish Hawk home-wrecking proved obviously and sadly true. The newly returned Osprey had taken over one of the heron nests and had, by their close proximity, made the other nest nearby uninhabitable. While I was taking notes about this trespass, I heard the whistling takeoff of some ducks, and as they headed noisily skyward, I aimed and tried to capture them in mid-flight. This is a very tricky task for an auto-focusing dSLR, since it requires the camera to separate the birds from the very busy background. I had set a proper f-stop, but that wasn't the right one to fully stop the action, so there's a lot wrong with the image. Still, overlooking the inadequacies, I actually like the shot of this pair of Wood Ducks off on a mission. At the very least, there's no doubt about the identity of the birds—the female, flying ahead, the more vibrant male, behind—a splash of jaunty colors in an otherwise still drab landscape.