There were two very different types of bird that I photographed on Saturday at Blashford Lakes.

First, there was the posing and singing Robins.  They are plentiful at the reserve at the moment, and will tolerate the closeness of camera wielding humans like no other bird I know.  Which was good as I was trialing out a 2x converter and 300mm F4 IS combination for the first time.  The results of this are great in nice light – making a 600mm F8 light weight carry about equivalent.  It should be noted that the autofocus of this lens and extender work only on some Canon DSLR cameras.  These were all taken on the Canon 5d mk IV.

Here are the signing Robins taken on it.

They compare well to this Robin taken a bit further away – again in full voice – on the new Canon 100-400mm IS mk2 lens.

The other type of bird – was the Long-tailed Tit.  This small bird is constantly moving around from branch to branch – usually in a small flock searching for food.  They can be difficult to focus on because they hop and fly along to another perch very quickly.

I did manage these two portrait shots on the 300mm with converter setup.  The autofocus is slower with the 2x converter – making grabbing shots of them more of a challenge with this setup than without.

And to show them in movement – this composite of 3 shots bursted of one of them hopping along the branches.

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