[mst]

Hard to imagine how you could make this lens much better; surprise it isn't a '5'.

Well, it needs a really outstanding lens to deserve a 5* rating Even the mighty 200/2 VR failed that mark on the D7000 (but reached it on the D200).
Which also means that 4 stars is already a very high rating, especially for a zoom lens.

Btw I looked at a couple of your images and the focus was spot on (for example the otter eating a fish); i presume you auto focus but i'm still surprise at the accuracy of the focus.

I do use autofocus, and the AF of the D7000 works very well. However, with a fast moving subject like this one you also need luck, so I often shoot series of images with AF in continous mode. In the sample images, you will of course only see those images that turned out well (and not the many others I deleted).

Oh, and that otter is a penguin, btw.

-- Markus