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Bird spotting

By Rex Fisher

Tricks of the Trade (Part 1 - Toys of the Trade)

Birding is fundamentally about the sheer joy of appreciating Mother Nature’s great gifts but it can develop to the point where you would like to know a bit more about what is there. This is a brief three part outline that might help you if you want to go that far – careful though it can be addictive.

All hobbies are a good excuse to get a few toys, oops I mean tools, and in birding these basically come down to binoculars, field guides and a notebook. You can add a telescope for long distance viewing but they, along with a tripod, are very expensive and awkward to carry around (probably best left until you are absolutely addicted and can’t find a friend who has one). Clothing needs to be protective but I think subtle in colour as I suspect that bright colours, especially reds, may make birds wary.

BINOCULARS allow you to see more of a bird’s subtle beauty and its key identifying features. However, depending on what you want to do, there are compromises to be made in terms of magnification, field of view, weight, compactness, brightness in low light, close focusing ability and cost which are all interrelated. The markings such as 10x50 or 8x40 will help to guide your choice. The first figure represents the magnification, usually in the range 7 to 10 times. Higher magnifications will usually mean more size and weight, narrower fields of view, longer close focussing distances and more shakiness when trying to hold them still. The second figure eg x40, x50 refers to the diameter of the front lens and the bigger that number the more light entering the lens and the wider the view you will get for that magnification, but also the more size and weight. If you divide the lens diameter by the magnification you get a figure called the exit pupil which indicates the amount of light potentially entering your eye. Thus 7x40 binos (exit pupil of 5.7mm) will theoretically provide a brighter view in low light than a pair of 10x50s (ie pupil 5mm).

There are other factors such as adaptations for wearing glasses, ensuring that one side is adjustable to compensate for the differences in you two eyes, the feel in your hands and against your eyes, robustness for what you will do, and reasonably fast and smooth focusing mechanisms.
Here is a tip – as a general rule don’t search for a bird by looking through your binoculars because the field of view is too small. Try to locate it with your natural vision, fix and hold your eyes on it, then bring the binos up to your eyes and you should still be looking at the right place. The two exceptions, described in the following section are if you are trying to locate a call or to detect a highly camouflaged species.

FIELD GUIDES also require a compromise or like me you buy the lot (make sure they are the latest updates though). Firstly consider if you want to carry one with you as compactness will then come into play. I now just make notes and drawings as books get a bit awkward to access and I tend to better observe detail that way (but I have regretted it on a couple of occasions). Other issues to consider are the accuracy/readability of the pictures, the amount of information in the text and the clarity of the distribution maps. In my opinion if you want a compact book with good pictures then Slater’s guide has long been a standard. However I carry Morecombe’s compact version in my car as I like his information, maps and key identifying features although his pictures don’t seem as good. I mostly refer to Pizzey and Night’s book (now in its 8th edition) as the pictures are clear (but I have noticed inaccuracies) and it has good information. Simpson and Day’s is also quite OK. Try to get some guides from the library and see what you think but note that ones with photographs may be literally giving you a snapshot of one gender at one age or time in their seasonal cycles.

You may strike situations where you can not find an exactly matching description anywhere eg I once saw a young, sick quail like bird which I couldn’t match in any book, not only in plumage but also it seemed too big for any of the Button Quails that it had to be. However a specialist immediately identified it as an immature Red-chested Button Quail based on descriptions I had noted down. The size issue, he explained, was because being ill the bird had puffed up all its feathers, doubling its apparent size.

Thus drawing and writing descriptions in a compact NOTEBOOK can be important and I will discuss that further in the identification section. With all this gear, and a diminished bank balance let’s now look at how to find these feathered friends.

PHOTO: Binoculars and Field Guides, key aids to birdwatching.

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