New Camera

I have been biding my time waiting for the price of the Cannon 7D mk 2 to come down. Also I was undecided whether or not to change to a compact camera for digiscoping, but in the end I decided to stick with a DSLR as I can use this for both techniques.

I checked the prices and decided, as the mk 2 was now cheaper than I paid for my mk1 in 2010, it was time to purchase.

So what improvements have I experienced? Well the autofocus on birds in flight has improved massively. It grabs the focus instantly and allows me to track the birds in focus much better than the earlier model did. The image quality also appears to have improved. Video quality has also improved, as has the ability to focus using Live View when digiscoping.

This morning I went over to Braunstone Frith to try photographing gulls in flight. Despite the very dull conditions I still managed to get more images in sharp focus than I am used to.

Below are a couple of images from this morning:

Common Gull

Lesser Black-backed Gull

After putting the camera through it paces I headed off to Shawell to do the WeBS count. There wasn't that many gulls on the A5 Lagoons, but one of them was the juvenile Glaucous Gull that has been around since January.

Juvenile Glaucous Gull

Another regular also put in appearance. The second-winter Caspian Gull in the photo below has been visiting Shawell since November 2015.

Second-Winter Caspian Gull