Zoom is blurry??

i have a canon A720 IS & sometimes when i zoom in it is blurry. this is from a distance & NOT close up.
what should i try?:o

Example photos (with EXIF)?

i just took a pic in the house & it was fine......i will try an outdoor pic tomorow, this is where my son was having problems, he tried zooming in on a robin & his results were very blurry.

Birds are hard - they don't stand still very well. Unless you're right on top of them, they are such a small part of the scene that your camera may focus on something else instead, too. Add in poor light and using the longest zoom setting and even IS won't help a lot. Then, too, when you zoom in on them you start looking at the pixels rather than the bird's detail.

Just to give you an idea of how much lens you really need for birds, this robin at about 15 yards (the whole frame here) was with my 1D3 and 600 mm (300 f/4 and a 2x teleconverter) lens.

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Sue,
Can't add much to Jon's excellent advice, but since I'm in the process of testing the limits of my S5 and it's ability to zoom in on birds, I thought I'd comment.
I read somewhere that "If your tripod is easy to carry around, it's too small."
You can " carry" that to the extreme, obviously, but I always try to at least have a monopod with me. On rare occasion I get a decent bird shot hand holding the camera, but my best so far are with the benefit of a tripod.
The other luxury (as obvious as it is, I still have to remind myself) is that film cost is no longer a concern, so I just shoot shoot shoot, and invariably 1 or 2 come out much better than the rest.
Like Jon said, focusing on a small bird is bound to complicate things. Sometimes I focus on a larger object away from the bird, but at the same distance; lock in the focus then return to the bird. Since they have a habit of flying away on me, I've also starting keeping my setting at 12X (max. for my optical zoom) and AUTO. After I have a couple of quick shots, if the critter is still there, I start to play around with aperature settings, speed, etc.
Good luck.
Rob