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Anywhere you go outside, you'll find birds. On all seven continents, in the sea and in the snow, birds are a staple of the outdoors. So here's a thread about searching for, spotting, or photographing these flighty fellas. If you want to get started birding, consider getting a field guide first and foremost. Such as an app, like these: https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/ https://www.audubon.org/app or a physical book, like these: https://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Field-Guide-America/dp/1426218354/ https://www.amazon.com/Sibley-Guide-Birds-2nd/dp/030795790X BetterLekNextTime posted:Optics Here's some that I've spotted and photo'd here in Florida's swampy marshes. A little blue heron A great blue heron A barred owl El Burbo fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jul 22, 2020 |
# ? Jul 17, 2020 23:07 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 00:52 |
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I like the Audubon bird app, helps me identify birds based off vague descriptions like color, which area of the country I’m in and the time of year
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 00:05 |
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A while back I got to hang out with a purple gallinule while visiting a central florida park. Their feet are so big and silly, the're just adorable. Appologies for the of my fishing pole being in the way but I didn't want to move it and spook him before taking the picture.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 00:12 |
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Oops, I was working on replacing the Pet Island birding thread with a new effort post. Do you want this kind of stuff in here, or is this PYF? Optics Most birds want to stay away from people, so we need something to spy on them from farther away. Thankfully now there are a ton of (reasonably) affordable alternatives for binoculars. The high-end models run thousands of dollars, but you can definitely jump in with great results at ~$150-$250 or even better if you hit a good sale. Check out a recent (2019) rating from The National Audubon Society. If you are new to birding, the best advice is to get something in the range of 7x-8x magnification (as opposed to 10x, 12x, higher). Higher magnification gives a double-whammy of being heavier and magnifying shakes, making them more difficult to use. Some people move up to 10x but many don’t. The second stat on a pair of bins is the objective, which effectively relates to how wide or narrow the view will be. Something in the 40-50 range is good as they let in more light and with a wider view it’s easier to find the bird you want to peep. 30-35 will be more compact (i.e. better for travel, backpacking, or for a pair that you carry with you in your bag all the time) but a little harder to use. What about spotting scopes? Scopes are more expensive than binoculars and most useful for certain kinds of birding. You’ll know when you’re ready for one, and it’s usually when you get into identifying tricky waterfowl or shorebirds that you can’t go pspspsspsps and get them to come closer. A good strategy for beginners is to make friends with someone who has a scope or to visit known birding spots or nature centers where someone will have a scope set up. For photography, there’s a whole thread in Dorkroom that can help you with your questions. The OP is a little out of date but basically sound. Money starts becoming a little more of an issue here compared with binoculars although like everything there are budget options. Generally, you’ll want an interchangeable lens camera (DSLR or mirrorless) with a lens that’s at least 300mm long (ideally 400+) and with image stabilization to start getting pictures that are technically sound. Superzoom “bridge” cameras are another option especially if you are more into portability, convenience, and documenting what you see rather than aiming for a perfect photo for the cover of Audubon magazine.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 00:49 |
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I'm a hard 10 guy myself. In fact way back when I even used 12 power! There's a real great birder in the Baltimore area who uses 12 also. But those are rare.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 01:02 |
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Birdwatching would be right at home here and I happily welcome it. If you want to make a big effort post here that would be awesome!
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 01:06 |
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Oops, I was working on replacing the Pet Island birding thread with a new effort post. Do you want this kind of stuff in here, or is this PYF? Ill this paste it into the OP
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 01:07 |
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Kawalimus posted:I'm a hard 10 guy myself. In fact way back when I even used 12 power! There's a real great birder in the Baltimore area who uses 12 also. But those are rare. Yeah, I've used 10s forever, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that to start out with.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 01:10 |
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Hi, I used to look at birds professionally as a field technician and now mostly look at them recreationally. It's an awesome hobby in that you can just hang out near your house and watch friendly robins do their thing or spend thousands of dollars traveling to other continents to see cool poo poo with eccentric/loaded retirees. Weird marshbrids (Least Bittern here) are still my fave.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 01:31 |
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This bird was outdoors and attempted to come indoors. Sustained pecking at the window screen!
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 01:40 |
I've started tossing dried mealworms off the back of the patio for the baby birds to snack on. I've attracted a pair of baby bluebirds who are absolutely adorable but they usually end up getting bullied by a big male robin, who of course never bothers to eat the mealworms
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 03:27 |
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Birds are cool, I've just reached *20* species on my ebird list with a eurasian oystercatcher.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 08:14 |
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I was a really keen birdwatcher as a kid but drifted away as a teenager, as you do. I’ve been bitten by the bug again lately, looking forward to starting a new list as an adult. I’m lucky enough to work for a state nature conservancy body here in the UK- lots of enthusiasts around! Filboid Studge fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Jul 18, 2020 |
# ? Jul 18, 2020 08:40 |
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I like grackles. Perhaps too much.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 09:21 |
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I, too, enjoy looking at birds. For amateurs like me, I highly recommend the Birdlife Bird Count app. The app is made for the annual Birds in Backyards survey, which is where you spend 20 minute making a list of the birds you see in your backyard, or wherever you happen to be at that time. When it’s not counting birds the app functions as a quick field guide that lets you filter and search based on size, shape and colour. It also uses location to show the most through least likely results based on where those birds range. I don’t take photos of birds often so I stole this great photo of a Willie wagtail mobbing a Kookaburra. I once saw a pair of wagtails mob a wedgetail eagle and it blew my mind.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 10:06 |
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This thread has my endorsement, and my protection.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 16:34 |
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lots of good birds where i live, especially red tail hawks and great horn owls. also peacocks and parrots. however the only camera i have is my piece of poo poo phone. the hawks soar quite close to my balcony sometimes, they are huge and beautiful and when i try to get a pic of one its just a fuzzy dot
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 16:38 |
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Do you have a feeder you can attach to your balcony for less majestic but still amazing bird friends?
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 17:14 |
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Love birding. Have had a feeder in the backyard for a few years now wherever I lived. In the city it was all euro house sparrows and maybe some goldfinches in the summer and chickadees in the winter. Moved to a very rural very small town for work and it’s a whole new birdy world. I like grackles too, - smart and wily - but I really grow to resent them whenever a gang of 40 young males drive out everyone else and take over your bird feeder. If it wasn’t them, it would be the European House sparrows who I of course also have a soft spot for because birb but they are aggressive little bastards too, driving away smaller, native birds. This made me switch from sunflower to nyjer/thistle seed and it’s been wild how much it has changed - now I have all sorts of finches and wrens and native sparrows and it is a good feeder. I still chuck sunflowers out sometimes further back in my very rural backyard but that just means I only get grackles/house sparrows for a couple days. Saw a turkey vulture for the first time the other day. Apparently their populations are rebounding because the habitat they lost to farmland has been replaced by abandoned farm houses which they have taken to nesting in. Which I think is nifty. It’s like poetry. It rhymes. We just got a 10x set of binocs for free and are really looking forward to checking out the bird sanctuaries in my area. My region is a huge stopping point for all sorts of migratory birds so while there’s maybe a smaller set that live here year round you get to see all sorts of cool little duders as they pop by for a visit on their way to somewhere else.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 17:27 |
Grackles are a good lookin' bird but goddamn do they make awful noises. A flock of them making rusty door noises is enough to give anyone a headache
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 17:33 |
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ur in my world now posted:Grackles are a good lookin' bird but goddamn do they make awful noises. A flock of them making rusty door noises is enough to give anyone a headache I had a juvenile one outside my window for a while and it made such a racket every time the adult would come back with food
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 17:54 |
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I've been paddleboarding out to watch the terns feeding, it's great fun. They're incredibly skilled, diving from 5+ meters into the sea to catch tiny fish with what seems to be a decent success rate. Seemingly every time I watch the gulls on the beach there's theft going on, they'll happily chase another bird off a crab or something it's picked up from the surf.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 18:18 |
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my cat is norris posted:Do you have a feeder you can attach to your balcony for less majestic but still amazing bird friends? i do have a feeder but have not found the kind of seed local birds are interested in yet. most of the small birds that live around here seem to eat insects mainly. the birds that come closest are hummingbirds, i have several flowering plants on my balcony they like to visit. however they are even harder to photograph (with a phone) than the hawks because they are basically a fuzzy dot even when they are up close. i should also mention that my phone is a piece of poo poo its not like an iphone where you can do cool slomo hummingbird shots. ive been thinking of getting out one of my old Real Cameras Earwicker fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Jul 18, 2020 |
# ? Jul 18, 2020 19:49 |
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My favorite birds to wake up to are thrushes, specifically the hermit thrush. My least favorite bird to wake up to is a tie between a juvenile crow and a stellar jay.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 20:17 |
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I present, for your consideration: bird. Saw five of these guys flying around this morning and it was absolutely fuckin' awesome
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# ? Jul 19, 2020 20:14 |
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Birds are great, just recently got into this (what else is there to do during the pandemic?). I bought some binoculars from that Audubon guide, and even though they were from the "Get in the Game" category I've been extremely impressed with them, especially the vividness of the color. Compared to the lovely pair I had laying around it's night and day. I've been going to High Park here in Toronto which is just a short walk away and has all kinds of birds.
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# ? Jul 19, 2020 23:38 |
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I also got into birding because of the pandemic, when it was cooler outside and I could take long walks around the neighborhood and parks nearby. Mostly I've been using the Merlin app, which is from the Cornell Ornithology Lab, and a pair of 10x42 binoculars. It's too hot to take long walks now, but I'm going out to a state park a few hours away with a friend tomorrow, to hopefully see some shorebirds! I will post if I see some cool ones, but my camera is poo poo so I can't promise any good pics. Here's my bird question: what the gently caress is up with herons' necks? There are green herons at a park near my house and watching them telescope their heads in and out from their bodies is uncanny, what the hell
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# ? Jul 20, 2020 01:55 |
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Merlin is the best free bird ID app I’m familiar with. Ebird is fun gamification of bird identification, but you need to know what you are looking at, or someone is going to call you out for misidentification. For a while I tried to break into the top 100 in my county, but it’s really hard to catch up to the folks that have been recording sightings since the 80s. Look for local hotspots on ebird: birders tend to heavily favor the time efficient places to see a lot of good birds. Almost everywhere will work (birds are everywhere), but some are a bit birdier than others. Went rock climbing yesterday and we were getting circled by turkey vultures all day, despite obviously not having gone there for birds. I think I’ve basically only seen peregrines on alpine climbing trips. They are common elsewhere, i just have not seen them. If you are looking for rarities, I’d look for your local birding mailing list. A lot of birders are stuck in the 90s when it comes to non-ebird tech. If you are feeling spicy you can look at the unverified submissions on ebird (since they have lower latency than verified ones), but the mailing lists tend to be best.
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# ? Jul 20, 2020 10:13 |
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drstrangelove posted:Merlin is the best free bird ID app I’m familiar with. Ebird is fun gamification of bird identification, but you need to know what you are looking at, or someone is going to call you out for misidentification. For a while I tried to break into the top 100 in my county, but it’s really hard to catch up to the folks that have been recording sightings since the 80s. In the '90's most places were still using a phone-in voice mailbox for rare bird sightings It could be kind of obnoxious because there were often gatekeepers who might not pass along your sightings if you weren't in their "trusted local network". It's definitely hard to catch the leaders on a cumulative county list if they've been birding a county for decades. They'll have most or all of the birds that are seen every year plus a good share of the rarities. Many people also keep year lists (like "the big year", but at the state or county level), and then it's much more about your current effort than relying on having gotten a bunch of rarities over the years. Or you can focus on a smaller area. Maybe 3 years ago I realized I had a woeful total in eBird for my nearest regional park, and I could also tell the park didn't have all that many lists. So it was basically just an excuse to do more birding in my local open space. I added several new species to the park list and even a handful of likely new breeding records for one or two blocks of the county breeding bird atlas. eBird is fairly flexible in how you use it and you don't need to be a super obsessive birder, but they (rightly) want you to ID things properly. There is no shame in getting an ID wrong and being corrected. That's part of learning the birds. But if you are still in the steep part of the learning curve with lots of uncertain birds, it's probably good courtesy to send your photos or questions to a local birding fb group or email list first and get confirmation on the IDs before you submit an eBird list. Yes there are reviewers to try to catch mis-IDs but they are volunteers.
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# ? Jul 20, 2020 19:38 |
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I got a pair of mini binoculars - Leica 10x25 - and would really recommend minis if you get outside regularly and want to make looking at birds (and other cool things) part of your regular routine. I always used to have the feeling that I needed to be doing some kind of Official Outdoor Activity to take the regular binoculars along, so I didn't bring them with me all that often unless I was specifically going out to look for birds or going on a hike etc. They are tiny and light and fit in my pocket, so it's no big deal to carry them whenever I'm walking the dog or just pottering about. I've had a lot of fun even just being able to watch local birds going about their business in the area beyond what I see of them at backyard feeders.
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# ? Jul 20, 2020 22:07 |
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huge shoutout to my boys and girls, australian magpies. Grew up in the suburbs with a deep fear of being swooped by these dickheads and I move out west a couple of hours and it turns out they are super placid intelligent pricks that swoop each other for fun when they get bored in a kind of fight club that happens down the back of my yard. I also get rainbow lorrikeets and they are very pretty but they will swarm other birds that are alone and push them out of a feeder which is a huge dick move.
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# ? Jul 20, 2020 23:05 |
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I have always loved looking at birds. It's too bad that I live in SoCal sprawl so there isn't a ton of open land near by house but I still get lots of sparrows, crows, mourning doves, and even some red hawks.
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# ? Jul 21, 2020 05:57 |
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there was a cave swallow fledgling near my apartment door this morning. i think he (she? it) hit something since it seemed dazed, so i managed to edge into a box and then left it on a high place on my patio. after a few minutes, i saw it fly out and join other swallows that were flying about. thats my bird story for today
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# ? Jul 21, 2020 09:56 |
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OMFG FURRY posted:there was a cave swallow fledgling near my apartment door this morning. i think he (she? it) hit something since it seemed dazed, so i managed to edge into a box and then left it on a high place on my patio. after a few minutes, i saw it fly out and join other swallows that were flying about. You hero.
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# ? Jul 21, 2020 10:06 |
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/wild-white-storks-hatch-for-first-time-in-hundreds-of-years In a rare piece of positive environmental news, a (small, partial) rewilding experiment has resulted in white storks breeding in the UK. Imagine what we could achieve with larger scale projects!
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# ? Jul 21, 2020 13:31 |
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Enfys posted:I got a pair of mini binoculars - Leica 10x25 - and would really recommend minis if you get outside regularly and want to make looking at birds (and other cool things) part of your regular routine. I always used to have the feeling that I needed to be doing some kind of Official Outdoor Activity to take the regular binoculars along, so I didn't bring them with me all that often unless I was specifically going out to look for birds or going on a hike etc. If it weren’t for cost I’d have already done the same. I should probably buy a pair of decent pocket bins. When starting out, I think I overestimated the practicality of full sized bins. Any advice on entry level 10x25s? My GF carries her 8x42s and a west coast sibley with her in a monster purse. She trained her shoulder pre-covid by carrying a full size mac book basically everywhere. She’s the reason I got into birding in the first place.
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# ? Jul 22, 2020 04:15 |
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Please PLEASE add the Merlin app to the OP it's so so good and has changed my bird enjoying life so much
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# ? Jul 22, 2020 04:47 |
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drstrangelove posted:If it weren’t for cost I’d have already done the same. I should probably buy a pair of decent pocket bins. When starting out, I think I overestimated the practicality of full sized bins. Any advice on entry level 10x25s? I have Hawke 8x25 and they are pretty nice, no major issues, very portable and a good price, I'd assume the 10x25 are the same. You can pay $$$ more for a slightly larger fov but I doubt it's worth it
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# ? Jul 22, 2020 06:38 |
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Hello, birds are awesome. Download the Audubon app on your phone. It's great for identifying unclear birds since someone will probably have it in a spotting near you so you can narrow down the dumb gull you saw from 20 to 3. Swainson's thrushes are the best singers. Kingfishers are also the best all around best to watch bird. Swallows are obviously the best jet fighters. Varied thrushes have the coolest feathers to randomly find when you're used to birds with boring north american plumage. Do you even woodcock? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6nj9AgY7M I mean I guess blue jays are great at eating peanuts but hey (steller's jays are better). Also diving ducks are pretty cool too. Reason to go outside in the winter when they aren't floating around the pacific somewhere. cowofwar fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Jul 22, 2020 |
# ? Jul 22, 2020 06:54 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 00:52 |
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drstrangelove posted:If it weren’t for cost I’d have already done the same. I should probably buy a pair of decent pocket bins. When starting out, I think I overestimated the practicality of full sized bins. Any advice on entry level 10x25s? Personally, I'd probably suggest 8's rather than 10's if portability is the goal - they're lighter and tend to have a better field of view which makes finding birds easier. Vortex Diamondbacks are fantastic entry level bins. I managed to snag a pair of 8x28's for super cheap from a resell store and now they live in my glovebox so I can grab them for short walks or if I see something interesting while driving around. My main bins (10x42's) are Vortex's too. Great optics for the price, imo. Regarding optics in general - a good piece of advice I got early on for comparing binoculars you might be interested in buying is to always take them outside and look under parked cars. A ton of birding is done in places that are darker than you'd expect since birds often skulk around in bushes or shady forested areas. Making sure your bins have good light gathering ability will really help see and ID the birds that are hiding out. Looking underneath cars with binoculars is a weirdly good way to tell how much detail you can get in dark areas, especially when light levels are bright sun / dark shade right next to each other. Another good thing to consider is close focus ability. Vortex is generally really good about having optics that can focus to very short distances which can help more often than you'd think. Even though birds generally stay pretty far away from people, sometimes they can come in pretty close and its really nice to be able to see details. Its also cool to be able to use your binoculars for stuff like butterflies, reptiles and neat bugs. Birds are awesome, birds are cool, please look at birds as often as possible!
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# ? Jul 22, 2020 18:31 |