Hi Dallas. Hope you don't mind me jumping in on this but I'm a bit of a keen wildlife photographer so might be able to contribute something to this. One thing to bear in mind is magnification. Depending on which eyepiece you get to go on your scope (I've got the 20-60x HDF on my ES80 GA ED and it's brilliant) you'll get up to 60x mag. With a really long telephoto lens on your camera you'll only get around 12x mag, which is probably around what you'll get with bins. The downside of a long lens on your camera is to get consistantly good results you'll need to shell out a few thousand pound on a decent lens. My photographic rig consists of a Nikon D300, 300mm F2.8 lens and a 1.7x converter, amounting to about 10x mag. This is probably top end of middle of the road wildlife imagining and costs around £7000. If you look in the latest photos gallery on the site you'll see the results I get with this setup as I think all the shots in there are mine.

Digiscoping is a viable alternative but bear in mind it does have a few limitations. Firstly, you said about buying a cheap camera. This alone will reduce the quality of you're images. Most of the better digiscoped images are taken in conjunction with a decent camera. It's the sensor quality that decides the final image quality and this is an area manufacturers cut costs on when producing cheaper cameras. Have a look on the Opticron website. They have a page dedicated to digiscoping. Also, because of the magnification used on digiscoping you are very prone to camera shake. Most digiscopers use a cable release or remote to press the shutter to reduce this and again it's only more expensive cameras that generally have this feature. Light is a big factor too with digiscoping. Forget getting anything decent if its anything less than full shunshine. The amount of light entering the scope is greatly reduced when attached to a camera so on dull day your shutter speeds will be so slow all or most of the shots will be blurred. Having said all this if the conditions are right you can get reasonable images digiscoping. At present I don't know any pro wildlife photographers who use digiscoped images. If the images were as good as a cameras they would be the first too believe you me!

Have a good think as to what you'll be doing the most, watching or photographing and make you're choice based on this. Unless you're like me and you intend to sell your images or have them used in mags I'd go for the scope and get a decent second hand camera to attach to it. What scope have you got in mind by the way. I've got the one mentioned above and a GS815. I'd reccomend both.

Simon, hope you don't mind me rambling on. I love sharing knowledge on wildlife watching and photography and if I can help anyone to enjoy it more I'll definitely do my best to do so.

Cheers

Paul

I'm envious of the Arctic Warbler, although I don't get too excited about "Sibes".  Otters sound fantastic, one day.  I do agree about people rushing past the common birds to get to the rarities.  How many birdershave admired the colours on a pochard's bill.  Only by studying the commoner birds are you going to pick up the subtelties which enable you to pick up the rarities.  It was how I picked up a couple of Pink-footed Geese.  No idea what made me stop to look at those greylags, and the same with Turtle Dove.

Let's organise another outing now the birding has picked up.  Feel really guilty I couldn't make the last one.  A late realisation that it clashed with another engagement. 

Simon

I've not seen the programme, will watch it on iPlayer when I get chance.  I do not class myself as a twitcher, I won't travel any more than 30 – 45 minutes to see a rare bird.  I've been looking for a new dimension to my birding for some time though.  I thought about photography but I have no artistic flair so have settled into trying to find my own scarcities.  So far the list only really includes waxwing and med gull but… 

Paul, how close are you to triple figures?  This year I hit my 200th British bird (wryneck) and I would be disappointed with a year list of under 100 (2009: 136, 2008: 101, 2007: 103, 2006: 113, 2005: 111, currently 141, worst year 2001 with exactly 100).  If you let me have your life list I will try to find a way of getting you over the line.  I can't understand some birders' attitudes of "my bird".  I take great pleasure in pointing out birds to other people.

Regards

Simon