Just to clarify, I am NOT a bird photographer. I'm not even a birder. I love listening to them sing, but I can rarely see them, let alone get my camera trained on them. When I try, they end up looking like a dark, fuzzy blob. But my friends were going birding and took me along. They know all the names - even of all the types of sparrows!

I can't say what I got was wonderful, but I'm really pleased with them, as at least they're recognizable! I used my 5D Mk III and my 75-300. Its an old lens and the IS isn't perfect. I should have carried the 1D with the 28-300, as it's a bit sharper. But I was afraid the weight would keep me from being able to be out all day.

They won't stand up to pixel peeping. I'm so envious of all of you who get such beautiful images - you can see each individual feather! I'm just happy to get something recognizable! Comments welcome.

Here's an estimating exercise that I use sometimes. Go to tawbaware.com and use their photography calculator. Plug in focal length, sensor factor, and subject distance to get the dimensions of the field of view at any estimated distance. For any given bird size in that field of view, you can quickly envision how big the bird will appear in the photo. Mostly it tells me that I have to get a lot closer with my 18-200 on my D7000 to get a small bird image that gets anywhere close to filling 1/3 or 1/2 of the vertical dimension of the frame. It's helpful if I'm out looking for a bird-filling photo to know ahead of time what distance limitations I might be facing.