Barnes chicks and kills

First visit to the London Wetland Centre for a while - a couple of hours in the late afternoon when the place has already been burnt up by the local families thrashing the bushes for rare acros. Despite this, while getting out of the car had a Sparrowhawk being mobbed by a Common Tern over the car park. Plenty of chicks around with 2 broods of Mute Swans, at least 4 of Tufted, 1 juv GC Grebe still associating with its parents, a Little Grebe (with just one chick), loads of Coot and Moorhen juvs around,
Also on site c50 Teal, c15 Shoveler, 4 Common Tern, 4 gull spp, still around 20 Sand Martin, Peregine with a kill on the hospital. Passerines really thin on the ground (see acro thrashing above).

Also tried an experiment with the new(ish) camera looking at the difference between using converters and cropping more. Overall I think the results are, err, inconclusive. These are the two shots at 400mm and 560mm (ie a 400mm lens with a 1.4 TC attached). Both are compressed down to around 300kb. Same bird at approx the same distance (400mm shots probably slightly closer).

Cropping both the shots to around the same size gives the following two pics (400mm first then 560mm).

For   fellow obsessives these are taken with a Canon 7D, Canon 400mm f5.6 lens with or without mk II 1.4x extender. 400mm shot at f5.6 and 1/1000, 560mm at f8 and 1/160.