Trying out my new lens

Since it was nice out today, I even sat out on the porch to get some sun, I took a drive out the Bald Eagle Preserve to use my new lens for the first time. My fiance, Jeremy, got me a 600mm - 1200mm lens for Christmas knowing that I love taking pictures and just started a business. I'm not going to lie, I usually just use the preset settings that are on my camera for my pictures so this lens is making me really learn how to use my camera. IE...change the shutter speed and f-stop to get a good shot. At first I was frustrated but eventually got the idea of what I needed to do, so with that I decided trial and error was the best way to learn.
Once out at the pull off, the dog running around looking for dead fish parts, I started to put everything together. I got my tripod out and assembled and my camera body and lens, found a spot that I could see some swans from and started to put everything together. The hardest part was just getting everything set up! The tripod was up and I put the camera on it and then the legs started to get smaller again. The tripod is new too mind you, once I finally got everything to where I could use it I snapped a few pictures. Made some adjustments and the tripod moved again...it probably took me a good 15 minutes before I REALLY figured out all the locking mechanisms in the thing. But once I did it was awesome! I found an eagle nearby and shot a few pictures of him as well before going back to the swans.
Gus had a fantastic time, he always has fun running around in the woods searching for dead things. Which he often does find. I wasn't sure how clear my shots were going to be since sometimes they didn't seem quite in focus, and I'm going to have to get the tripod dialed in a little more so that I hardly have to touch it to take the shot. Or just get it set up so I can use my remote. But, overall for my first real go with the new lens I'm really pretty happy with the outcome. Some of them pictures were really blurry, but others look great! I'll just have to keep practicing.

I haven't done any editing to the photos, I think they'll look pretty good with a little bit of touching up.