Frank,

I purchased the M1 MKII in November, 2017, and love it. I use the Olympus 40mm-150mm f2.8 Pro for my birding. This gets me to a 300mm crop equivalent. Depending on the type of birding you want to do this may or may not be enough.

As far as actual user experience, these are my personal observations.

1. The "continuous focus - tracking" works very well. If your bird is subject to quick or sudden changes of direction you may lose focus frequently. In cases like that I will track the bird, and only depress the shutter to lock the focus when I am ready to capture the images. But if the bird tends to go in in a fairly predictable flight path, I find that I can get focus lock early in the flight and maintain lock with appropriate panning. I find that if there are issues with focus in the end product it is my fault, not the camera's fault.

2. There are a number of continuous shooting modes you can choose from. I typically shoot using the 15 fps burst mode and use shutter priority (1/2000 up to 1/4000) at either 400 or 640 ISO, with variable aperture. I have been very please with the results. I have never filled the buffer.

3. As I said above, I use the Olympus 40mm-150mm f2.8 Pro. This lens/camera combination is very light and easy to use for an extended period of time. I don't know that I need a longer reach yet. I will be renting the Panasonic 100mm-400mm f/4 - f/6.3 in the near future to see how that works on the MKII. I have heard and read good reviews, but I need to see for myself. I have a friend that uses the Olympus 300mm f/4 Pro for both birding and deer, goats, etc... . He is very happy with image quality.

4. I found battery life is very good. I always bring two batteries with me just in case. If you shoot both RAW & JPEG be sure to have both card slots filled as you can fill up a card pretty quickly using burst mode.

Overall, I love the MKII for the type of birding I do. You can see two of my recent efforts at "When life gives you gulls" (Feb. 19, 2018) and "Reflections on a gull" (March 12, 2018). These images were all taken at relatively close range as I was experimenting with the various settings and what works best for me. The attached image of the three pelicans was at a range of about 200 yards. The second attached image of the bird (a Coot, I believe) taking off was at a range of about 50 yards. Both were shot with the 40-150mm zoom. Both have been cropped substantially in PSE 14.

I hope this helps.

Gary

I have not had a