The spectacular Andean Cock of the Rock can be seen easily at a Lek near the Cock of the Rock Lodge. Many years earlier we got to see these amazing birds at the Angel Paz farm in Ecuador. The lighting was very poor and we did not have good photo equipment. We could never get a single good picture despite being able to see many birds performing their amazing display. In many ways, we decided to seriously upgrade our photo equipment to be able to capture events like this. On this trip I had a 500 mm F4 lens, 1.4x teleextender, 300 mm f4 lens, 100 mm F2.8 lens and a Canon EOS 7D capable of shooting at high iso. Here the lighting also turned out to be much better since we went in the afternoon and it was a more open location for this Lek. Here are shots of the male wooing the female:   (Click) (Click) (Click). I was also able to put together a composition of the Lek by taking several shots and combining them (Lo-Res) (Hi-Res). A single wide angle shot is not sufficient since the birds just move too much to get a good shot all at once.

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