Can anyone suggest a good starter camera

If you want to keep costs down, a bridge camera is probably the way to go - the Panasonic suggested by Seymouraves, one of the Canons, Nikon - they all make decent cameras. At that budget, you're probably better off looking at the second hand market though, you'd probably need to double the price to get something good for birding (you need a reasonable zoom to get the bird large in the frame). If you're after ultimate quality however, you're going to have to look at DSLRs or some of the Mirrorless options with interchangeable lenses (and that is a whole different price point). What sort of birds are you after and at what distance? A Buzzard in the garden is a lot less demanding on a camera than a Sparrow the other side of a field :-)