250 mm Zoom and Focusing

Two more really far away birds from heavily cropped photos. I have to convince them to come closer or I'm just going to keep getting disappointing images.

Mourning Dove

Dark Eyed Junco

Cockatiel

This is a picture with the same settings, though I used the flash inside. Here the bird is roughly 5 feet away and takes up more than half of the frame. I even left it at iso 400. So the failures aren't necessarily the lens, though I can't really afford anything with more reach that is optically any better.