Quote: Look - you accused me of not understanding what were you were saying.
I like your images.
So this is all about you and your set up really... it isn't about Pentax or Nikon, and what you'd like to say is your Nikon set-up has faster focusing than your Pentax set-up, although people with better set-ups will probably find your conclusions worth nothing.
Personally, I have many strategies for getting pictures of birds in light in focus. Some of the above images were taken with manual focus lenses, so while I appreciate your stated opinion that you couldn't have obtained one of your images with Pentax AF, I have obtained some of my images with no AF at all. With my Pentax gear I tend to turn off tracking and rely on the faster burst mode and much deeper buffer to increase my odds of getting keepers. So I tend to think you would have missed a lot of these images using a Nikon APS-c camera, because of a deeper buffer and faster burst. I've attempted shots like this suing my older K-5 with it's 5 fps frame rate, similar to a 5300, once. It was frustrating. I don't know how you live with it. It's interesting you were able to go back to that. I couldn't.
People shot wildlife photography for 50 years with no AF.
So, I'm saying for people with Pentax gear, by developing good technique, you can end up with more keepers with your Pentax gear by using your camera to it's strength. Just the fact you are taking 33% to 60% more frames than you can with Nikon APS-c equipment means in many situations, you will get shots people using slower frame rates will miss.
Just saying... if you pick one element of a camera system and dwell on it, you can really get it wrong. There's more than one way to look at this.
Taken with my slow AF and manual lenses....