It has been three weeks since my last blog which was of birds in my garden and nearly a month since my last trip out. Christmas away, New Year, plus a bout of the coughing virus that has affected loads of others but even yesteday, it was only a local trip for a couple of hours to my local reserve, Fen Drayton Lakes.

But before I get to that, an apology to anyone that has tried to contact me through this website. I have just found out that the 'Contact' page does not connect to my e-mails so I never receive them. To complicate matters, the website designer that set this up appears to have disappeared and I have no access to the progamming section, so, for the time being, please contact me direct at

Garth.peacock@btinternet.com

Now, back to business. As some of you know, later on last year, I changed my gear to the Canon R5 mirrorless camera and the Canon RF100-500 lens - easier portability - although I still have my trusty Canon 500 f4 lens. I also use this combo with a 1.4 converter but have not had great success with the 2x converter.

Having read up on the experience of others, with nothing of any real interest to photograph, I decided to try out the 2x converter on some rather distant Redwings at Fen Drayton Lakes, hand held and with the incamera 1.6 crop, effectively shooting at 1600mm and at F14. Here are a couple of the results.

Light was quite good.

I find these quite acceptable for posting on the web so I intend to try this again in suitable circumstances.