What I meant with live view is use it as an objective test on a static subject, use a tripod, use live view 10* and manual focus, 10 second timer, see how sharp the picture is.
Then repeat with normal autofocus and compare.
If you can use live view to shoot birds your a better tog than I.
ah ok...I only have a 2 second timer I believe, there is no 10 second timer on the T2i, at least I don't think. Since the tripod is crap I'll probably just rest the camera & lens on a table