FREE Quick Tips for Bird Watching Adventures

Tips For Choosing Your New Binoculars:

Think in terms of what you want out of your binoculars. Think about varying combinations of weight, power, image quality, durability, field of view, and ease of use.  
Then decide which set of features meet your bird watching needs.

• Image Quality

• Comfort and Ease of Use

• Viewing Conditions

• Price

What’s Your Personal Preference?  Birdwatcher can choose between compact and full-sized models. For children, compact binoculars are a good fit for bird watching. Compact binoculars fit in the palm of your hand, and are a good solution to the bulky size and heavier weights characteristic of full-size binoculars. Both are equal in terms of magnification, image quality, and price.

Decide on what power you need. Power represents the number of times an image is magnified by the binoculars. For bird watching, 8x and 10x is best.

Larger lenses allow more light to enter and provide better images, but can also be heavier.

Larger exit pupils provide more detail in dim light. The exit pupil is the size of the disk of light formed near the eyepiece.

Field of view represents the area visible through your binoculars. If you wear glasses, look for ird watching binoculars with a higher rating for field of view (with glasses). If you don't wear glasses, retractable eye cups are easier and faster to adjust than soft-rubber ones that fold back.

Balance and alignment are important for birdwatchers. Focus on a distant bird, move the binoculars away from your eyes while continuing to look through them. You should still be able to clearly see the bird while the binoculars are held a foot or more away.

What are your viewing conditions? If you are a serious birdwatcher,  bird watching binoculars should hold up to extremes of cold, heat, humidity, fog and rain, and repeated bumping and swinging.

How much do you need to spend?   Surprisingly, the quality doesn't always come with price. More expensive models do have more effective coatings on their lenses and prisms.  However, overall, lens and prism quality have improved in most binoculars. Some models in all price categories can produce images that have less quality,.

I wanted to add a water feature to our bird bath, specifically a mister, something the birds would enjoy playing in. Unfortunately, I’m not in the market to spend much money. My solution was a very easy, budget-friendly bird bath water dripper made out of a milk carton. Items needed: - milk carton - shepherds hook or tree branch, something very sturdy which is able to hold about 8 pounds - pin (I used a thumbtack) Fill the milk carton with water and hang from hook. At the lowest point in the bottom, use the thumbtack or pin to prick a very tiny hole to allow water to drip. Start with a really tiny hole – if you need more flow, push the pin back in and make it a tiny bit bigger. Judi