Even more important to excellent bird photography than having the right camera is having the right lens. There is no point in purchasing that dream camera body and crippling yourself with a cheap lens. In the 8 years I've been leading digital photo safaris I've had the chance to use or at least see used just about every likely lens made for Nikon and Canon camera bodies and have plenty of hopefully useful thoughts to share with you:

Following closely on the heels of Nikon's D3S announcement which raised the bar in low light digital photography Canon has just launched the Canon EOS 1D Mark IV which ups the ante even further by claiming the same rated ISO performance with a greater 16MP resolution in a smaller sensor (APS-H, which has a 1.3 crop factor) allowing the use of smaller and lighter lenses and reducing vignetting issues. Read more to learn what else it has to offer... Read more »