Red-winged Blackbird

I am no where near as good as any of posting on these boards but here is my attempts to photograph birds outside of my own backyard. I found these 2 males and female Red-winged Blackbirds while out in a forest preserve walking my dogs. Please let me know what you think.
70-300

A nice series, you don't often see photos of the females. They seem a little "soft" as far as focus. I realize the 70-300 might not let you get close enough to fill the frame, but that would help. There is a lot of dead space around the birds. Fill flash could help add some catch light to the eye, especially the second shot. These are a really good first effort and you should be encouraged to keep after it. Thanks for sharing.

Good attempt, I would look up the rule of thirds to try and hone your eye compositionally.
there is definitely movement blur, resulting from being zoomed in to 300mm,
if you're using a crop body try not to allow your shutter speed to drop below 460mm (500mm actual on camera display) try using AV (Aperture Priority) or TV (Shutter Priority) and bump the ISO upto 200 - 400 to allow better shutter and aperture settings.

Oh and don't take the dogs with you next time, with a little bit of stealth you might be able to get a little bit closer.

Good luck, looking forward to the next series

Good attempt, I would look up the rule of thirds to try and hone your eye compositionally.
there is definitely movement blur, resulting from being zoomed in to 300mm,
if you're using a crop body try not to allow your shutter speed to drop below 460mm (500mm actual on camera display) try using AV (Aperture Priority) or TV (Shutter Priority) and bump the ISO upto 200 - 400 to allow better shutter and aperture settings.

Oh and don't take the dogs with you next time, with a little bit of stealth you might be able to get a little bit closer.

Good luck, looking forward to the next series

I just noticed that your 70-300mm lens has IS which case the absolute lowest shutter speed would be 1/60th of a second at 300mm which is 3 f stops, I would personally keep above 1/125th, (2 f/stops) again uping the ISO will help.