Bob Marcotte writes The Word on Birds. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an RSS feed, at least not yet!
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I started sketching because I have seen, and admired, the field notebook of a man we encounter occasionally at Island Cottage Woods. He sits down and sketches the birds that come to him. Then he goes home and colors in the sketches... and has a great journal of his time in the woods!**************
Life at our house has its amusing points. This essay is about birders and optics, and marriage.
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Every article on optics for birding recommends buying the best-quality optics straight-away. Usually the writers also concede that almost no one is capable of taking that advice, and that most birders buy three pairs of binoculars to end up with the expensive -- and right -- pair...
Chuck and I are no exception. We own three high-end binocs, plus several mid- and low-end models, and one Spacemaster telescope.
I remember two amusing observations by Thomas Connor, in his book "A Season at the Point":
Rule 1: "Real birders don't share binoculars."
Rule 2: "If you don't want to spend the better part of a month's mortgage payment, try not to have this experience [ie: don't look through someone else's high-quality optics]."
I didn't believe this second statement, until I looked through a pair of Zeiss binocs at Ramsay Canyon one evening. I lifted the binocs to my eyes, whereupon God turned the light back on in the canyon, and I went quietly crazy in front of my poor husband's eyes. Worse, the woman who owned the Zeiss binocs said that her husband's B&L Elites were even BETTER...
A few weeks later, I spent an hour trying to show a friend a Great Blue Heron. The bird was in an open marsh, not too far away from us, on a scrag, with a Flicker pointing at it! She didn't see it until I handed her my Nikons...
We went home and ordered the B&L Elites...
Until the B&L Elites arrived, Chuck didn't understand why I had gone crazy that evening in Ramsey Canyon, he just suffered my moaning.
Before the new binocs arrived I warned him: "Refuse to hand them over ONCE, just ONCE, and a second pair will be in the mail within 24 hours."
Obviously, within a month, a second pair arrived, (he ordered them himself) because, well, rules 1 and 2 are TRUE. If you have the passion for birding and can get your hands on the cash, the general outcome is assured.
However, starting with good-quality, moderate-cost optics helps you figure out what you really need in optics before you spend lots of money.
For example, I have a very small interpupilary distance. My husband's car binocs, Swifts, serve him very well, but for me they are monoculars. OTOH my car binocs, my trusty Nikon Travelers, work great for my interpupilary distance.
Our Rule 3 (or corollary to Rule 1): "Real shore-birders do not share telescopes."
Our Spacemaster has served us well for > 20 years! But we have looked through the Kowas and the Swarowskis... We really need a second, better, telescope. Or maybe two excellent scopes and another Bogen tripod... I suppose this means that I need a job.
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