Laurel, my longest lens is a zoom that reaches 200mm (it's an 80-200mm). I'd love a longer one, but I use Nikon and they are horribly expensive, so I make do with cropping/enlarging the photos I take. If I were starting out today, I'd probably go for a Canon, their lenses are really good for wildlife photography. I have also seen some amazing photos taken on smartphones (some of the photos I upload here are taken on my mobile) - the quality nowadays is impressive, so photography doesn't have to be expensive.