Trevor's Birding

Hint # 3 Buy the best binoculars you can afford

Do I need to buy some binoculars to be a birder?

No – but having even cheap binoculars will help you develop your interest in birds. Using binoculars will help you to see the many details of the colours and the feathers and subtle differences between different species. It also helps to identify a bird that is far off.

What kind of binoculars should I buy?

Binoculars come in a variety of magnifications. Somewhere on the body of the binoculars you find some numbers. These numbers will say something like 8×30 or 10×50. The first number refers to the magnification. The second number refers to the diameter of the front lens in millimetres. The smaller numbers usually mean smaller and lighter items to carry which is important if you spend long hours in the field. The 10×50 type gives excellent views of the birds with good magnification but they can get rather heavy after a few hours strung around your neck. Investing in a good harness to carry your binoculars will be money well spent.

How much should I spend on binoculars?

How much have you got? This is really up to the individual. In Australian dollars, some serious birders feel quite happy spending $3000 on excellent quality binoculars. I’m sure they are wonderful, but I can only justify about $100 and I have seen some wonderful birds using cheap binoculars like that.

Bottom line

While the bottom line is your budget, it must be said that you get what you pay for. If you want good quality in your optics, you will have to pay for it. For the general, occasional birding use, anything over $500 Australian is probably overkill. I know many birders would strongly disagree with me. It’s your hobby; pay what you can afford and justify. Personally, if I had $3000 I would rather spend $100 on a perfectly adequate pair of binoculars and use the rest on petrol to go see some wonderful birds. That’s far better than sitting at home with the best binoculars money can buy – and seeing only sparrows and starlings in the backyard.

Link:

• Choosing Binoculars for Birdwatching – a downloadable file from the Bird Observers Club of Australia.

Cattle Egret, Adelaide Zoo

Hint # 2: Listen

One of the things I enjoy doing when I wake early is to listen – around dawn – it doesn’t happen too often mind you. I enjoy listening to the dawn chorus of birds. I try to identify all the species by call alone. I also enjoy doing this while camping out bush. Then it is different because I am not always sure what I will hear. When visiting friends or relatives in other parts of the country I am frequently surprised by the different calls coming from the birds outside.

Train your ears to listen

Listening to the birds can be done anywhere, just like watching them. No special equipment is needed. After training your eyes to see the birds in your environment, it is also very important to listen to them. You need to train your ears to listen.

Bird call recordings

There are some helpful resources available that will improve your birding call identification skills. For many years tapes of bird calls have been available. These generally have a short recording of each species. Sometimes the bird names are printed on the cover insert. Sometimes there is a narrator telling the listener what bird call is being played. Now many of these are available on a CD. Far more species can be covered in this format. More recently, birders are turning to using an iPod to store all the bird calls. Some are even taking these into the field to help with identification.

Sheer delight

Whatever method one uses to learn about bird calls, listening to them can be a sheer delight. I few days before writing this I was with my wife having a picnic in the Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens in the Adelaide Hills. An Australian Magpie came and sat on our picnic basket and proceeded to entertain us with his beautiful carolling. And all this only a metre away! Magnificent. Click here to read about it.

Australian Magpie

Hint # 1: Observe

Birds are everywhere. Even in the Sahara Desert, the busiest city or the cold Antarctic there are birds. Everyone knows what a bird is and generally what distinguishes a bird from other creatures. Although, I’ve seen a few birds that I am not so sure about.

The first rule of birding is:
Observe.
Use your eyes.

Look at the birds in your immediate environment. Look out the window. What birdlife do you see? What birds do you have in your garden or in the street? Did you see any birds on the way to school or work? Were there any birds near the shops when you went shopping? Did you see any birds while waiting at traffic lights, or at the bus stop or while on that train journey?

Keep your eyes open. When you start looking carefully, you will be amazed at the numbers of birds that daily surround your life. Not to mention the great variety of species that shares your part of the world. And watch their behaviour. Birds do some very interesting and quite bizarre things.

King Parrot at Adelaide Zoo