Blackbird on the fence

This is the male of a pair of visiting black birds.   The female is often to be seen looking for worms in our garden, fairly close to the house.  I caught this photo from an upstairs window as he hopped onto the fence from next door's garden.  His partner was busy digging for worms in our garden.  There is a picture of her in the extra pictures.  
I was initially trying out my camera on the female, to see what it was like using its maximum telephoto. It is always just slightly blurry, but I'm not sure if that is me or because it is using a digital zoom as well as the optical zoom.  The 'manual' focus is not really manually controlled (it automatically focusses on a section of the screen when you press the focus button) so I'm still trying to work it out.