larsen

Not wanted to make your decision harder but before choosing give some thought to what lens you'll be using mostly. Neither the Canon or Nikon have inbody stabalization so you'll might have to buy a lens with it, which can cost a lot. Sony, Pentax and Samsung have stabalization built into the camera body which makes their lenses far cheaper. Of the two I'd go for the Nikon, and I say that as a Canon user. Nikon have a slight edge over Canon at the moment. But as others have said, pop down to your local camera shop and hold them, you might find the Canon grip a bit too small.

superb photos, I never see frogs out of the water at the moment.

Thanks Jaggsy, never heard of such courses before.

Look at some of the cheap Panasonic compacts, can't go far wrong. The Hewlett Packard hairycatcat suggested is great value for money but doesn't have an optical zoom just digital.

Have a mate who has tried a similar scope with his camera with poor results. He ended up getting a 2X convertor and a decent zoom lens of ebay.

Fantastic photos, got to agree about the robin especially.

Even if you had a good camera, sod law says you wouldn't have had it with you that day. Must have been great to watch. As for a camera, it depends what you call 'low budget', it's often the lens that is more expensive than the DSLR camera. Or you could look at an all in one camera such as the new Pentax X70 Superzoom, but all the main camera makers will one similar. As for videos, I find YouTube good for them.

Excellent photos. Haven't heard or seen any in my pond this year either, might have get the pump going to wake them up. :-)

done

well as a newbie, thanks Rolfe, very useful post.

some cracking pics labsnlurchers. red kite being my favourite as they are so hard to photograph IMO.

any luck?

If your monitor has a DVI input it might not need calibrating. Mine doesn't so I use Adobe Gamma. Pics still look awful of mates monitors though.

Final owl pic is my favourite but all r cracking.

Was it the Sony Alpha A200? Good camera, probably not as good as the Nikon and Canon but at least it has image stabilisation. But as Mike says you'll need a decent lens, from what you say a zoom in the range of 200mm or 300mm. Realistically you are looking at £500 but look at the pics by DawnB and others, worth every penny.