If you're looking for a really nice and almost cheap birding camera you won't have to hock the farm for, look into the Nikon Coolpix P900. Just bought one for my upcoming Papua trip, and it's badass. 83x magnification (equivalent to a four thousand mm lens, half of that from optics), and a really astounding image stabilizer make for a great birding companion. Decent wide-angle also can. Of course, it has a birding mode (low light settings plus continuous shooting at 7 fps). All that for about USD 500 (five hundred) If only it shot RAW...but maybe they'll add that with the next model in May, which will have 120x magnification
Examples below. The Black-thighed Falconets (world's smallest raptors) were shot freehand at 83x magnification.
Red-crowned Barbet
Black-thighed Falconets
Bornean Brown Barbet
