Here is your Painted Bunting after I did a little work on it in Photoshop. Your image looks like it went from the camera to the computer without being worked on a little bit.

That's the wrong way to mount your camera/lens. You are putting a great amount of stress on the 4 tiny screws that are in the lens flange. They go thru the flange and threat into the plastic body. Its much better to use your lens foot to mount from.

Great Spangled Fritillary is the first one

Here is what I have been using for the last few years

Here is what I've used for a few years. I'm luckey that all of our metro parks are flat but this runners buggy does go thru sand also.

Here is a Red-breasted Nuthatch. What you have is a White-breasted Nuthatch.

I have a D800E and a 200-500, on my camera I've changed from 12 bit to 14bit. This gives you larger files. So when you engage DX mode and using the 200 - 500 the effective long end of the zoom would be an effective 750mm, you'll end up with 19 to 21MB files which can give you stunning 8.5-11 color prints.

When a photo trip costs between $3000 and $6000 I don't feel a tip is necessary. The true costs of a trip is about 50% of the final cost per person. So with a profit between $1500 and $3000, why is it necessary for a tip?

Here are the images that I got on those mornings. I was driving home on the 22nd when when I found the eagles in the field on a dead deer. The eagles seemed to not toledate each other or the juveniles.

Try using Topaz Denoise AI. It has a sharpening feature in it also.

I change the image size from full frame (FX) to DX size which gives me 750mm effective when I have the lens set at 500mm

I used my new to me D800E that replaced my busted D800 for about the same cost that would be charged by Nikon if they would still repair the D800, I used my 200-500 set to crop mode for these images. I haven't seen mirrorless cameras do better than these images.

For both days this weekend I got the Limpkin at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge. I used a D4s/ 600mmF:4g VR and with a TC 1.4EII at times. Yesterday I had 795 exposures.

I used my 600mm F:4gVR and my D3s body

Where I live we have several new metro parks. These were taken at Howard Metro #1 and Howard Metro #2. The Black-necked Stilt is very protective of its nesting site. They will attack and chase away anything large, big or small.