dark-edged bee-fly

a couple in the garden today -- trying to photograph them in flight with the 400mm lens but just too tricky so resorted to the Canon 70-200 f4 II which has a close focus of 1m and with the Canon 5D4 it was still not easy but pleased with a couple of flight shots

Black-throated Thrush revisited

wanted to have another look at the Black-throated Thrush before it departs for the east and had an idea of what shots I wanted to try and get an din spite of the dull weather it did the full wing and tail spread on three occasions and managed to get the underwing coverts about as well I as I had hoped

very high ISO Hen Harrier

on a very dull night well after sunset a beautiful male Hen Harrier appeared so just for a laugh I cranked the ISO on the Canon 5D4 up to 20,000 ISO -- yes they are silly noisy and at 1/200th second witht eh 400 DO and 1.4x not likely to be very sharp but I was still amazed by the amount of detail visible in such lightless conditions --

Short-eared Owl afternoon

after dispensing with family duties, not bad as it was lots of nice food and coffee, the sun broke through so had a quick bash at the Short-eared Owls -- first decent afternoon with the 5D4 and 400 DO2 --

Gannets

5D4 and 400DO2 --

Marbled Godwit

sunny day -- Canon 5D4, 400 DO2 and 1.4x convert mark 3 -- I have finally found a camera and lens combination that suites my style and mobility -- think the 1DX is going up for sale --

I don't do reviews

as such -- I bought a Canon 5D4 just before going to Canada and used it for all my bird photos and some landscapes with the 400DO2 and mainly 1.4 converter while there -- the high ISO performance was much appreciated in the generally cloudy conditions that typically necessitated 1600ISO and up to 4000ISO but what struck me most and it was apparent with the Pallid Harrier was the autofocus accuracy on small subjects even at long range and also the amount of detail that it is possible to see in very small images -- here are some stupidly large crops of some seabirds taken from the shore by the cottage -- with 10x32 bins I could not actually see what they were -- the second image shows the specks in the frame, birds to the right are Surf Scoters, and the admittedly terrible lower images show the extent of the crop and how they can be seen to be Marbled Murrelets -the larger image is full frame cropped to 1600 pixels wide--- this is probably not the greatest example but other will follow -- also attached a flock of Red-necked Phalaropes taken from the back of a bouncing, very speedy boat as the birds flew past at speed --