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Well @Chig, as you mentioned the EF 100-400mm II is so much cheaper than the RF 100-500mm in NZ, here are a couple of NZ birds, a Takahe and a Tui taken through a 100-400mm II. I checked your NZ prices. The RF 100-500mm is about the same price as in the UK, but the 100-400mm II is about 25% cheaper and the R5 even cheaper still. I don't understand Canon's pricing.

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Quite a range of blue colors in these. Lovely!
 
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Happy New Years birding clan! It's been fun to listen, watch and learn from all of you. I hope 2022 brings us all a bit of a refreshing breather and more great bird photo opps. Here's a few photos from our PNW Christmas weekend winter storm that made for a great opportunity to get out and shoot during the winter months here. All taken with the R5 & RF 100-500 @ 500mm f/7.1. DxO is a no brainer for me! Also recently figured out how to load R5 color profiles into Lightroom so that was a bonus Christmas gift to me :)
1. Chestnut Backed Chicadee
2 & 3. Dark Eyed Junco
4. Spotted Towhee
5 & 6. Varied Thrush
7. Song SparrowView attachment 201876
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Great shots, and those backgrounds are equally as lovely.
 
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The afternoon of the last day of 2021 was sunny and fortunately also the morning of the first day of 2022. Even so, I needed iso 5000 and 6400 for the Great Tit and Blue Tit at 500mm f/7.1 in the shade.

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The afternoon of the last day of 2021 was sunny and fortunately also the morning of the first day of 2022. Even so, I needed iso 5000 and 6400 for the Great Tit and Blue Tit at 500mm f/7.1 in the shade.

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Great shots Alan! Here, on Oahu it is almost constant and rather heavy rain - second day in row and tomorrow is forecasted the same:mad:!
 
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Great shots, Chig! Are most of the birds you see located only in New Zealand? I just wonder how Darwinism affects birds with different flight ranges over oceans.
All my photos are taken in New Zealand.

All of New Zealand's native birds flew here from Australia originally even the flightless ones such as kiwi which became flightless afterwards.
Some very small birds such as the Riroriro (warbler) which weighs only 6gm have managed to cross the Tasman Sea between NZ & Aussie which is over 1050 miles/1700km which is pretty impressive although probably blown across in a severe storm.
Of course strong flyers cross this sea often especially large seabirds so this has a big affect and New Zealand only has about 200 native birds vs Australia has more than 800 native species.

The other big factor affecting NZ bird evolution was the lack of mammalian predators before humans arrived about 600 years ago. This made flightlessness more advantageous so we had a huge number of flightless birds which have since become extinct due to predation by humans and predators we introduced such as Stoats, Rats and Possums

We had flightless swans, ducks, geese & parrots as well as many species of Moa which varied in size between the Bush Moa which was the size of a turkey up to 2 species of about 3.6m / 12' in height and weighing about 230kg / 500lb and also the heaviest eagle known: the Haast Eagle which weighed about 15kg and had a wingspan of about 2.6m, this would have been a pretty scary bird easily capable of killing humans as it specialized in eating Moa.
 
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Just to illustrate the situation here: the photo is taken with my old D7000 from the apartment of a friend. 1:07 PM today!!! It is no mist - just a rain...

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Heavy sun at Holbox beach.
The birds arent't skittish at all. You can get as close as 2 or 3m. I don't know, if this is common for those birds?
If you come too close, they just jump 2m aside.
R5 + RF 100-400

Laughing gull
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Royal tern
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Another two laughing gulls
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Brown pelican
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Another beautiful series, Oskar.
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Well done, Sir.
 
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Cam - 1DX MKIII
Lens - 500f4
Often heard, but rarely seen Water Rail. Having a swim on looks like "liquid gold" one early morning!
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Cam - 1DX MKIII
Lens - 500f4/1.4TC
Puffin
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Cam - 1DX MKIII
Lens - 500f4/1.4TC
Puffin portrait
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