Lapwing holds court

I photographed these Lapwing today and observed one bird dropping in by the main group, which had formed a loose circle. The new arrival landed just outside the main group and hovered and wing stretched, reminding me of a Storm Petrel at sea! Taken with Nikon D3 and 600mm F/4 with no teleconverters or in-camera crop mode. The D3, when used in the intended FX (full-frame) mode, retains its full 12 mega pixel images but when used in the DX mode, reduces to 5 mega pixel but increases the focal length by c.1.5x. The drawback though is you lose cropping capability later in the "digital darkroom". The images below have been given the full treatment tonight! They have been cropped two-fold, exposure altered upwards by half a stop, warm camera filter applied, shadows and highlights enhanced, and the clone stamp used to remove intrusions!