When 3X zoom is not enough

My Olympus camera only has a 3X optical zoom, (which I do appreciate) but this generally does not zoom in enough to get naturalistic bird photos. This swamp hen was not afraid of me and I could get quite close, but i did have the camera set to multi-shoot mode, so I could choose the best photo later. Also it meant I didn't have to worry about the "delay" (for focussing and exposure readings, since they are keep the same between shoots).

Swamp Hen struts his stuff

PS I do have a further 3X digital zoom, but i have found camera shake so hard to avoid, as well as lower quality of digital zoomed images have discouraged me from using digital zoom much.