2 purple and yellow Sunbirds come to a flowering shrub in the small garden patch which projects out from our apartment into the Mahogany trees outside. They have been busy destroying the shrub by pulling off the outer fibrous bark to take for nest-building.... and I've been trying to shoot photograph them for weeks now. Without any success. The few frames I got, are too dark. So, I setup 2 SB800s suspended them with bungee-cords to the grille above and put a 300mm on the camera inside the room. I wait and I wait and wait and nothing happens! Then, just as I move off for a coffee or a ciggy - I can hear the tweets! By the time I am in position, they are gone.... Anyway, while waiting in vain I've photographed raindrops, flowers from the shrub, and today a dragonfly that spent a while visiting and keeping me company...... but no Sunbirds yet.

The almost-setting sun was behind this flower [can anyone ID it?] and made a kind of 'halo' of the spiky stamens. The background was too bright, I was shooting into the sun light, so if I exposed correctly for the background I lost all detail in the flower. Using a pair of warmed-up [TLA1 gel filters] SB800s off-camera added light into the flower nicely and I was able to darken the distracting background with a fast shutter speed. This image was taken while waiting for the 2 elusive Sunbirds to turn up.... they did but they disappeared as fast as they could when they spotted me looking at them through a big lens.