No holds barred and a close encounter with the slope of death!

   

Barred Warbler

Some 18 months ago I traded in my trusted 1DX mrk 1 and upgraded to the new mrk 3. I was very happy with my old 1DX but the shutter count was starting to get high and I decided to go for the mrk 3 while the mrk 1 still had reasonable residual value. For still photography the improvements in the mrk 3 were largely incremental apart from the new live mode which appeared to make the camera a kind of hybrid between mirrorless and traditional DSLR.

          

I’ve been largely disappointed with the mrk 3. The increment improvements for stills are so modest as to not make any perceivable difference. The live mode is simply unusable handholding a telephoto lens and the camera would often lock up completely requiring it to be turned on and off at the most inconvenient moments. To make matters even worse the new eye detection software only seemed to be available in the unusable live mode. Cannon recommend a software update to sort out the locking  issue but this did not solve the problem.

 

The mirrorless R5  has had excellent reviews, both from personal acquittances that have one, see here, and from the press. Looking at the specs from the perspective of my own personal usage there seemed to be a number of major advantages over the 1DX

 

Firstly, the pixel count on the R5 sensor is more than twice that of the 1DX. Now this should not be confused with the physical size of the sensor, which is roughly the same on both cameras, the 1DX just has larger individual photo sites. There are advantages and disadvantages of both. The larger photo sites of the 1DX should produce less noise, particularly at high ISO speeds. The greater number of photo sites on the R5 should allow larger picture cropping without pixilation of the image. The latter is important as almost all my bird photos are cropped.

 

Secondly, the eye tracking auto focus is fully enabled.

 

Last but not least, it is 50% lighter than the 1DX.

 

So I hatched a cunny plan. I ordered a R5 from a supplier with a 14 day no qualms return policy so I could road test it before selling the 1DX. On receiving the R5 I was somewhat shocked by how much smaller it was. It looked quite insubstantial compared to the 1DX and felt as though it might snap in two if I dropped it, a test that the 1DX had previously passed with flying colours! The main shell also had more individual components, and hence seals on it, than the 1DX leading me to be concerned about how watertight it might be. With regard to the latter, I was reassured by an online review where the R5 had been taken to bits revealing excellent water sealing on all joints.

 

So I set off bright and early on Thursday morning for Norfolk armed with the R5, 500mm lens and convertors. My first port of call was the small village of Wiverton near Cley where a first winter Barred Warbler was located. 

 

The Barred Warbler breeds across temperate regions of central and eastern Europe and western and central Asia. It is strongly migratory wintering in eastern Africa. It is a surprisingly large grey and white warbler with the adult birds, particularly the male, being heavy barred beneath.  In the UK they are comparatively rare in the spring but around 100 birds/per year, mainly first winter birds, are found here in the autumn. I have only seen one before in the UK, a popular and showy first winter bird at Titchfield Haven in the winter of 2017, so I was very much looking forward to seeing another and trying out the R5.

                

The showy Titchfield Haven bird in 2017

The bird had been faithful to a small lane where it was feeding on insects and spindle berries and I soon had my first view as it moved restlessly through the bushes in typical warbler fashion. I can’t imagine a more difficult test of the eye recognition software than a small, partially obscured warbler in undergrowth and it was soon obvious that this complex palette of shapes and colours was going to outwit the software so I reverted to central single spot focusing. I then spent some two hours with the bird rattling off a number of shots with the R5. I had it set to silent shooting which took a little getting used to but is so much less intrusive than the machine gun rattle of the 1DX! I was pleased with the results, a little noise in the background when cropped which increased with ISO speed but nothing that post processing could not handle and with little or no discernible pixilation even at massive crops. At the very highest crops there was perhaps a hint of pixilation but nothing like that intrinsic to the 1DX.

 

  

Huge crop showing very slight pixelation

      

Similar size crop of Titchfield haven bird (it was closer)  on 1DX showing noticeable pixelation

After my typical sandwich lunch in the car I headed to nearby Cley where I was targeting a flock of attractive Snow Bunting in an area known as Arnold’s Marsh. This location holds fond memories for me being the site of the first and only Isabelline Wheatear that I have seen in this country. 

 

Now a little tip.  if you are planning to walk along the beach at Cley, particularly the hour or so slog to Blakeney point, try and do it at low tide when you can walk on wet sand. At high tide you are facing with an energy sapping trudge through loose gravel which, believe me, is very hard work indeed!

 

On the walk to Arnold’s Marsh I tried the eye tracking AF out on a few gulls with very good results, the focus locking more of less immediately onto the birds eye even on quite distant birds. The eye tracking AF gives you the ability to freely compose the picture whereas with the old single spot focusing you need to keep the eye on the focusing point, meaning that you have to move the focus point if you want the eye off centre. This is ok for a human subject who you can tell to stand still but not for a moving bird!

 

I soon located the Snow Buntings and again the eye tracking locked on immediately to their small eyes. I knelt down and had starting taking pictures when I noticed a movement right in front of me, a first winter brownish bunting had been camouflaged in the pebbles and I had only picked it up when it moved. Now I’m pretty sure that the rat-a-ta-ta of the 1DX would have immediately flushed the Bunting but the stealth of the R5 did no such thing.

   

Snow Bunting

The Snow Bunting is, as the name suggest, a truly hardy bird being the most northerly recorded passerine in the world. It is an Artic specialist, with a circumpolar  Arctic breeding range throughout the northern hemisphere. There is a small resident population on the Cairngorms which I have seen feeding around the ski lift car park in the depths of winter. Some do move south in winter and are typically found on UK eastern pebble shores although there is one not far from my home right atop the Malverns this winter.

 

The harsh storms of recent weeks have taken a heavy toll on this year’s seal pups and a number of causalities were evident on the beach. Further down the beach from Arnold’s Marsh a first winter Iceland Gull had been reported as feeding on one of these unfortunate storm victims. The Iceland Gull is one of the so called northern white wing gulls that can occasionally be found in the UK in winter. 

 

The location was fairly obvious as I approached with a number of other birders watching the Gull which, by all accounts, had gorged itself to the point where it could hardly move and was now slouched on the beach looking rather contented. The R5 again immediately locked on the eye and I took a few shots and watched it for a while before heading back to the car in the rapidly diminishing twilight. 

   

The very well nourished Iceland Gull

I would summarise my experience with the R5 so far as very positive. The next test I plan is to take it to my favourite wintering Short-eared Owl spot to see how it performs on birds in flight in low light.

 

So now onto my encounter with the slope of death!!  

 

I have already had one attempt at the Belted Kingfisher located at Brockholes nature reserve, see here. Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to have another go! The bird had been showing intermittently on the river Ribble at a place called Red Scar Wood. Access to the bird was by all accounts, however,  difficult down a steep slippery slope. I hatched a plan to drive up late morning, spend a couple of hours looking for the bird and then visit my daughter in Manchester. I would stay the night at Rachels and if I did not see the bird I would try again the following day. I arrived and parked on the road to the nearby crematorium and made my way along a footpath to the point of access to the wood. The drop down to the river of perhaps 100m was indeed very steep with OS locate showing the contours bunched very close together. I meet another muddy birder who had just climbed the slope who very encouragingly said to me “you will fall on your back!” I had my waterproof trousers and top on in case of this eventually and had left my scope in the car. The 45 degree slope was absolutely treacherous with a combination of wet slippery clay and leaves and trees made all the more hazardous by the slips of previous mountaineer birders. It took me 15 minutes to get down, a good proportion of which was spent on my backside, and I was covered in mud by the time I reached the riverbank. Other muddied birders told me the Kingfisher had not been seen since 09:30 and indeed there was no further sign that day. If the trip down the slope of death was interesting, the journey back up was downright dangerous, crampons and a climbing rope would not have been out of place! I got back to the car, removed my muddy waterproofs and walking boots and departed for Manchester. I had a lovely relaxing evening catching up with my daughter and partner and decided to only try for the Kingfisher again the next day if it was reported.

 

The next morning I was back parked at the crematorium at 08:30 and checking RBA for news. The Kingfisher had been reported on the opposite bank again. Cue another encounter with the slope of death only to learn that the bird had been reported around a bend in the river out of sight and reach from the base of the slope of death.  Another young birder told me that he had tried to access the bird down the slope around the bend but the terrain was much worse than the slope of death with a precipitous drop into the river! I spent the whole day at the bottom of the slope of death but of the Kingfisher there was no sign. The most galling aspect of the location was that the terrain was football field flat on the other side of the river. A local birder told me that they had tried to get access from this side but the farmer “hated birders”. I’m not sure whether he was born with this curse or if he acquired it through interaction with birders on his land.

 

As twilight was setting in I climbed back up cursing my stupidly and vowing not to do so this again. I subsequently hear reports of someone smashing their  kneecap on a tree and another birder dislocating their hip – the slope of death was well named!

 

 

 

  Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!