Thanks! The first bird is Kit's buddy, Red Breasted Nuthatch. He watched the finches bully him now the cat looks after it.

Ever considered looking on the second hand market? Ever looked into Nikon? I don't know much about canons but I did look up the specs, still a very nice starter camera. I have found great lenses for half of the retail selling price that I still use today on the used market, check it out . Some people just abandon photography and fire sell all their gear for dirt cheap to get it out of the way but that's a patience game if you already have basics to work with while you wait.

For birdwatching 300mm minimum is a pre-requisite and I'm considering adding an extra 1.4X tele to bump it up to 420mm to my gear in the future, there is no way around it, even I find it very limiting but the bigger the lens the harder it is to move around when hiking and they get really expensive. Some of these birds are really small especially in the juvenile stage and if they don't have enough space, they will not come. When I first started taking pictures of that chikadee, he was just a little bigger than my thumb when he began to fly to the feeder.

If you are going to change your body entirely, are you looking to go mirror-less?