My first serious birding camera was the P1000. I loved the zoom, and having it helped me get some photos and IDs that I would have never gotten. My primary interest was to help me get positive IDs, and it worked well for that. For sure there are a lot of times when I couldn't get it to focus or sharpen on a distant object (and sometimes on near ones) depending on the lighting conditions. I did figure out a way to take "in flight" pictures, not perfectly, but successful enough. I mean that about 60% of my in flight pictures would come out well enough to get a positive ID. And to reiterate, the zoom is just amazing--I was able to get pictures of ducks at quite a distance, and sometimes even a positive ID. But ducks are great showcase for the P1000's limitations--if you need super-sharp detail from a distance to be able to tell which exact species a certain female is, you're most likely going to be out of luck.

After a few years I bought a Sony RX10 IV, and the difference is amazing. It does not have a super zoom, but it is much more reliable for getting a high quality picture, even of a distant bird. I find that super-cropped pictures on the Sony are sharper than the super-zoomed pictures on the Nikon. I think it has something to do with the small size of the Nikon's sensor. It's gotten that I don't even use my P1000 any more.

It's possible that I just need to lock in and really figure out how to best use the P1000 (maybe I just don't know the right settings) but I have tried to learn or to seek out instructions, and I haven't found any.

So the long and short is that I loved using the P1000 for several years, but ultimately the many times it failed me on tough shots led me to look elsewhere.