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Anyone have a good M42 or K-mount lense for birding, for sale. I can't afford hudreds but sure wish I had a sharp lense.

JC, sounds like you've got a Pentax camera. The Tamron 75-300 is pretty decent and I think costs under $200. The similar lens from Sigma might be slightly better and costs a few dollars more. Not pro-grade lenses, to be sure, but can be used to take good photos.

The Sigma 135-400 and the other >300mm k-mount lenses that I'm familiar with cost a lot more -- over $500 and many cost upwards of $1000.

Thanks for reminding me about this.
I now have a good Pentax lense and just waiting for the right time to use it.

Mind you, I already had the Tamron 70~300mm but I didn't think it was good enough.

Thanks again.

Heh. I didn't say the Tamron 70-300 was "good enough". I just said it was "pretty decent" and noted that it's not expensive. I have in fact taken some photos I'm happy with using this lens, sometimes with and more often without the teleconverter. Here for example is a photo of a whooping crane taken last spring down in the Aransas NWR near Corpus Christi, Texas, using the lens. I was 50-75ft from the bird at the time.

But it's not as powerful as I'd like. Taking good photos with it requires luck and patience, and while I have patience, I often don't have enough time to exercise my patience, and when I'm rushed, I get shots like this. But in that case, even having a 500mm lens might not have made a huge difference. Although equipment is important, success photographing birds has more to do with luck and patience (or persistence) than with equipment.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I have an eastern screech owl nesting in an owl house in my back yard. I see her out there daily, and when I take the garbage out around dusk, she allows me to get quite close to the house before she pulls her head in. I have set the camera up on a tripod fairly close to the house and waited for her to appear, so I could trigger the camera remotely, but so far, no luck. The best photo I've gotten to date is not a BAD photo, in basic terms. It's sharp enough that, at 1:1, you can see the grain and texture in the wood quite clearly. But the screech owl isn't a large bird, and she's by nature pretty well camouflaged. So I really need to get closer to take a truly good photo. The Tamron 70-300 lens is capable of it -- but as I say, it will take a little luck and a lot of patience.

I would have to agree.
BTW, we know eachother on the Pentax Forums.