BEST BACKYARD WILDLIFE LENSES

When you’re staying at home as much as possible you can soon run out of things to shoot. After all, there’s a limit to the number of family portraits, bowls of fruit and vases of flowers you can photograph before your creative mojo starts to diminish. But step outside and, if you’re lucky enough to have a backyard or garden, you can capture wonderful shots of domestic birds and other wildlife.

Naturally, these creatures are small, and you need to shoot them from quite a distance, otherwise you’ll scare them away before your finger has even made it as far as the shutter button – and that means powerful telephoto reach is the order of the day. However, extra-large lenses generally come with similarly outsized price tags, which isn’t helpful when we’re having to watch our spending, so here’s our pick of smart telephoto zooms at reasonable prices.

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM

£449/$499

The original edition of this lens had a sluggish ultrasonic micro-motor autofocus system, mediocre image stabilisation and poor handling, due to the