Nice variety - I especially like the BG in the bluebird photo. Looks like everyone is busy with nest building! -- Liz Stanley Bloomington, MN Backyard weather and feedercam: http://www.overlookcircle.org Photo gallery: http://www.pbase.com/gymell/liz_favorites

Hi, welcome to what can become a fascinating hobby. You can be involved in birding as little or as much as you like with any kind of digital camera with at least a 10 X zoom. Binoculars and point and shoot cameras start in the hundreds and run into the thousands if you switch to DSLR cameras, and the lenses can cost as much or more. But you don't have to take photos to enjoy birds, and I bot an excellent light-weight 24X pair of bins for $100 If you just want to feed birds instead of going out into their habitat, there are inexpensive feeder bird booklets in WalMart in the birdseed section. You can feed black oil sunflower seed in tube feeders, maybe have a hanging suet feeder and an inexpensive bird bath, but some people on this forum put in sunken pools or buy solar powered bird bath fountains, so you can pay anything there also. Left alone, Nature stays in balance, but when humans start putting out food things can quickly get out of hand. If you use tray feeders or feed scraps, dog food, cracked corn, peanuts, or cheap bird seed, you might quickly flood the neighborhood with aggressive non-native species such as Starlings and House Sparrows, as well as Grackles, Blue Jays, squirrels, chipmunks, and if you spread food on the ground, probably raccoons and rats..all quickly breeding and multiplying on your coin, and preying on the native song-bird population you want to watch. I only keep a couple of feeders under my eaves because I prefer to do my birding where birds are not artificially fed. Most feeder birds eat seeds or suet and I prefer to observe/photograph warblers and vireos, if I can do it. If you bird in a wildlife sanctuary, or near a wetland or ocean you might be able to bird from your car; I took many wonderful photos from the car when we visited FL over New Year. In fact, that's my preferred method now that it's tick season! That can work if you have a large bird that lets you approach, or a camera with strong zoom, preferably all three.. Here's a photo taken yesterday coming back from swimming on Poppy Mnt. We turned off the car engine and rolled forward to observe these wild turkeys crossing the road ahead From 3-21-09, Poppy

National Geographic just had a special on birds of paradise. The differences in each of the different species is astounding, amd the photography was excellent. You should also check out the "Life" miniseries. There was a whole section on birds.

OK...looks like this can go away now.