Organisations
We joined the Scottish Wild Life Trust to have unlimited access to the bird sanctuaries. here you can get some amazing sightings, and invaluable help from people who really know what they are talking about. They have an excellent site. They provide tons of books and resources at their visitor centres and a daily log of all the (bird) visitors and where and when they’ve been seen.
Compact Cameras
I don’t want to promote any particular company. I suggest a quick search around the web. Ask friends as I did. Get them to let you try a camera out for a day. The kind of camera we are talking about can be seen on this site for example. My friend let me try his Nikon, I settled on the Canon Powershot with the Wifi features. When my friend saw the wifi he was about to buy a new camera but he found that you can get a memory card with the wifi chip built in!
Enjoying bird watching 