A common sight at this time of year is Great Egrets snaffling tiny fish in the local park…
Very springlike mild weather. Oriental Greenfinch and Eastern Great Tit singing everywhere, lots of Dusky Thrush hopping around. In Kamiiso a couple of days ago I had my first Osprey of the year as well 000’s of Common Gull, 3 species of grebe and various passage duck including Smew and Gadwall.
The light lens day continued…
So surprise surprise neither the RF 600 f/11 or the EF 400 f/5.6L are as good as the EF 500 f/4L but on days like yesterday sometimes it’s great to not worry about heavy lenses and dodgy shoulders.
Actually I used the big lens this afternoon and the camera/lens started shuddering and making loud noises and an error message appeared in the viewfinder. Hopefully just a case of cleaning the contacts….
400mm seems awfully short after being used to 500mm for the last 10 years…
But it is a lot easier carrying around.
I tried some Scoter BIFs…
Topaz DeNoise rescued these.
Some more shots from the Canon RF 600 f/11.
Struggling a bit with it: the slowish AF and high ISO are a pixel peeper’s nightmare. Small low resolution shots like this are not so bad.
BIFs are hard, at least they’re hard for me.
A soft but interesting enough shot.
A lot of noise reduction and sharpening going on here. Again, at such low resolution and when looked at on a phone they are passable.
It was raining all the way home…we stopped at a few spots.
The best bird of the trip was the Lesser Scaup, my first lifer since last summer.
Apart from the wildfowl and eagles we also saw 2 male Hen Harriers, a flock of Bohemian Waxwing, Oriental Magpie and Ring-necked Pheasant.
Eagles must get really tired of crows…
The eerie calls of Black Scoter are a common sound this time of year…
The Lesser Scaup was still around the next day…
Some winter gulls…
A White-tailed Eagle in nice morning light…
