Quite far away too, how did the center just stay focused?

Jim, are you familiar with depth of field? It is the distance from near to far that remains in focus for that photograph. It is a function of aperture, distance from the subject and focal length. Suffice it to say that your camera was probably set at a very long focal length, perhaps at or near the maximum of 50x and your depth of field was extremely short, maybe a foot or less. Therefore, only the object that was focused on was in focus.

If you look at my raptor pictures at the URL below, you'll note the same phenomenon in the last picture of the small owl, even though I was close to the bird.

http://fishtalkfishingreports.yuku.com/topic/11521/A-few-assorted-raptors