those are really nice shots your getting there kevin,wish I could get results like that,4 from me the greenfinch was a through the branches shot and im surprised the camera managed to focus,the third pic was iso1600 unfortunately (first light)the last pic I included because its not often you see a cormorant scratching itself on a town lamppost
What settings are you using? I was using Tv (shutter priority) and using at least 1/500 as I recall (EXIF data should be on all my photos).
And to be fair, I do post-process...mostly curve and contrast adjustments in Photoshop, and because the photos are reduced to 33% for the Gallery, I apply Unsharp Mask (90%) to compensate for both the reduction and for the JPEG compression (which by nature both amount to a small blur).
I liked your gull, you didn't clip the white like I was (I didn't post any of the horrible white bird photos...). One of my highest goals is white birds...White-Tailed Kites and Egrets are favorites of mine. You also seem to have less graininess, but maybe you weren't using the digital teledapter settings?
Admittedly, your shots seem a bit soft, but depending on how far away, perhaps inevitable?
If anyone is that curious, I could post my current shutter priority settings...but honestly I'm not doing anything I didn't learn already to do on my Nikon Coolpix 4500, and the shots I posted so far have been in severe overcast, or very contrasty, intermittant sun...supposedly a problem for the SX60.
I haven't had the chance to try "birds in the brush" yet. Those were basically impossible when I was digiscoping (couldn't find and manually focus the scope that fast), so not generally shots I'm in the habit of looking for.
