Ft. Myers in April, which lens/camera combo do I bring

I'll be staying in Ft. Myers beach in may and want to shoot the Burrowing Owls of Cape Coral, bald eagles, and osprey in the area. I'm looking for input on which lens/camera combo to bring. Since this is a family vacation and not a photography trip, lighter is obviously better, and I would prefer to bring the lightest combo of Canon 7d mkii and 400mm f/5.6. Will the 400mm f/5.6 be enough lens?

If not, this is what I have available... but I really don't want to haul the 300mm or 500mm with me :

Canon 1dx
Canon 7d mkii
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 mkii IS
Canon 300mm f/2.8 mkii IS
Canon 400mm f/5.6
Canon 500mm f/4 IS
Canon extender 1.4 iii
Canon extender 2.0 iii

If you can, bring the 7D and the 400 for places like Corkscrew Swamp. Bring the 1DX and the 500/1.4 for shorebirds, Eagles, owls, etc. Drop by Bunche Beach if you've never been, one of my favorites.

stinky wrote in post #17923977
I'll be staying in Ft. Myers beach in may and want to shoot the Burrowing Owls of Cape Coral, bald eagles, and osprey in the area. I'm looking for input on which lens/camera combo to bring. Since this is a family vacation and not a photography trip, lighter is obviously better, and I would prefer to bring the lightest combo of Canon 7d mkii and 400mm f/5.6. Will the 400mm f/5.6 be enough lens?

If not, this is what I have available... but I really don't want to haul the 300mm or 500mm with me :

Canon 1dx
Canon 7d mkii
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 mkii IS
Canon 300mm f/2.8 mkii IS
Canon 400mm f/5.6
Canon 500mm f/4 IS
Canon extender 1.4 iii
Canon extender 2.0 iii

Take the 7D2 and 400mm. Burrowing owls don't spook that easily and you can get frame-filling shots of them with 7D2/400 combo. Eagles and ospreys are a different matter. For those you usually need as much reach as you can get, especially for eagles. But if you take the 500, you also need to take a tripod... probably not suitable for a family vacation.

Obviously the extenders will give you more reach, but you will have less crisp AF, and that is not good for BIF. Definitely take the 1.4x and experiment, but if you are shooting handheld I don't think you will gain much, because camera motion will probably be the limiting factor for sharpness.

G3G4G5 wrote in post #17928542
If you can, bring the 7D and the 400 for places like Corkscrew Swamp. Bring the 1DX and the 500/1.4 for shorebirds, Eagles, owls, etc. Drop by Bunche Beach if you've never been, one of my favorites.

Just a comment about Corkscrew - the birds are in wooded ponds near the end of the boardwalk. It is very nice to view, but it's a challenge to get good photographs because of the busy backgrounds. For this reason I've stopped going to Corkscrew. Example shot below.