>>3929799Get an APS-C camera and an APS-C 70-300mm lens. Best reach per dollar deal you can get by far. The DX 70-300 kit lens for Nikon's crop DSLRs is a little slow but it's perfectly capable of zooming right up on distant birds and churning out great photos. It's all you need for casual birds. And those lenses go cheap, and are usually sold alongside used Nikons. If you don't have a Nikon but have a crop camera of some other brand, get an adapter, the savings would allow for that. If you have a full-frame, fuck it, just buy a bird-only crop camera. That would STILL be a lot cheaper than almost every full frame telephoto lens. I use a D5500. You can also get a Z50 or a Z fc for futureproofing and use the adapter, but that's a little pricier.
