I had a good day with the camera today. It started early, with a group of very cooperative rats down at the edge of Falmer pond. There were 5 or 6 running around, but the best group shot I could manage was this one.

Two more photos rats posing nicely for the camera.

Rat perching on a tree stump

Rat on grass bank

That was early morning, but by lunchtime the sun was properly up and I took the opportunity to add a 1.4x extender to the 100-400 Mark II lens. This gives a whopping 560mm lens, which combined with the crop sensor of the 7D Mark II gives an equivalent reach of just shy of 900mm on a full frame camera. That’s one of the reasons the 7D is so popular.

So with that kind of weaponry, what did I get?

Lots of photos of pied wagtails…

Pied wagtail on the roof of St Laurence Church

Several photos of mistle thrushes, but these are my favourites…

The star spot though was an (un)common blackbird. At first glance there’s nothing particularly startling about it, but if you look closely the eye ring on this bird is red (not yellow), and the beak also had a red tint to it. I’m not sure just how unusual this is, but it was the first one I’ve seen.

Blackbird with red eye ring and red tint on beak

Using the extender limits you to the central focusing points (not really an issue for these sorts of photos). The lens remained very responsive and sharp.

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens. For the bird photos I added the Canon EF 1.4xIII extender.