I've taken some time off from my macro photography to check the birds at on of our local nature reserves. A bit quiet, but this Heron kindly came in for a landing:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/chirpy_uk/2603225643/

Wow, that's one mean sounding rat But hey, he's tiding up after himself.

I can see why you wouldn't want to be nearby when he turns up though!

AFAIK, Sigma haven't had any plans to release it in the Pentax mount. The 180mm is available.

Poor thing. Looks like an Aussie version of a Moorhen. Most water-birds seem to fair quite well with only one foot. Which is just as well as you do tend to see a lot of them caused by fishing line damage.

Right. So every time you post the count goes up

It's probably "post count" related

That's a gorgeous shot

As for ID - do you have a shot of its back as that might help. A very quick Google came up with:
http://www.club100.net/species/P_siculus/P_siculus.html

but herpetology isn't something I've looked into.

Taken this morning at a local lake from a hide with the K20D and Sigma 500mm f4.5

I had to wait a couple of hours for the the adult plus chick composition, shot it, then the rain came down by the bucket load:



http://flickr.com/photos/chirpy_uk/2572058795/

It was quite funny watching the nesting adult (I'm presuming a female) settle down for about 10 minutes having a nap. It then woke up and called to the other adult (male) for more food. He took a couple of minutes to turn up and hand over either weed or some insect larva from the lake, which she then fed to the chick (there only appeared to be one that had hatched so far). He'd then go off and she'd settle down for another 10 minutes and then repeat.

Hi Rob, welcome to the forum

You've mentioned most. For me it was:

Spare battery
Spare memory cards (SanDisk Extreme. For the K20D I'd recommend the 4GB SDHC cards as they fill up quickly otherwise if you decide to shoot raw)
Memory card reader if you need one
Lens cleaning cloths
Rocket blower
Camera bag
Monopod with ball head (it's become an essential piece of kit for me)
Spare plate for the ball head (if you're going to use more than one lens on it)

Those seal shots are fantastic. They're a little noisy, but it looks like you used higher ISO (400) to give the DOF and speed a good chance. Very well done and the lens looks like a very good tool for the job.