When February arrives and
the eagles are soaring and the herons are nesting my love of bird watching
revives. Bird watching is ranked as one
of the most popular out door activities, but unless you can actually see them
it isn’t much more than a walk on the wild side. The hard part is being able to get a bead on
them and then try to focus your binoculars before they fly away.
We had a small pair of binoculars
but would spend all of our time just trying to figure out what tree to look at
in the distance, and it wasn’t much fun.
This year I bought my husband (well, we bought them for both of us) a
pair of Bushnell Instafocus binoculars.
The best part is they were on sale, a really good sale, because all of
the bird books imply that you should buy the very best that you can afford. Don A. Nelson (Seattle Times, Thursday, March
27, 2008) recommended the Bushnell Legend for the occasional watcher. If you
only get the yen to bird watch during hiking season a “good” pair of binoculars
is sufficient but if you want to join a group, get up at dawn and pursue it
seriously you might want a more up-scale model.
The sky is the limit. If money is
no object and you are really passionate about your hobby you can spend over a
thousand dollars for something like the Brunton Eterna.
Good binoculars really do
make a difference. With our Bushnell we
just point at whatever we are looking at and there it is! They are extremely
simple to focus and being able to actually see the feathers on the nesting herons
high in the trees is quite a thrill.
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