Who Do You Think You Are, David Bailey?

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with my photos. I was out this morning, in the damp early morning mildness, and saw the kingfisher. Joy! I took a photo. Here it is:

I know there is a kingfisher in this photo but even opening it in Photoshop and enlarging it made it difficult to tell the difference between bird and bulrush.
I have partially solved the problem, the frugal way by buying a second hand digital camera off ebay. It is a fixed lens camera only suitable for snaps but at 16 megapixels it will be a big improvement on the phone. It cost £40, my dream digital SLR costs nearer £1000 and there were ones I couldn't even dream about costing over £2000.
The other solution of course is to dig out the old Canon AE1 35mm SLR with its 300mm telephoto lens. This does have its drawbacks 1) It will seem like forever waiting to get the film back from processing 2) they would then have to be scanned into the computer 3) I would have to learn how to use it again. Shutter speed? focal length? remind me someone.