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Buying Binoculars

Beverly's Birding BasicsBirding

Beverly’s Birding Basics: How to buy your first binoculars

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal July 22, 2020
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

Second of three parts

      Over time, birding binoculars will start to feel like a piece of your anatomy. They’ll be attached to your face for hours at a time for years to come. Whether or not you’re going to enjoy birding – and how skilled you can become  – depends a lot on your binoculars.

     To complicate matters, the price range is wide – from about $120 for the most basic, entry-level pair to nearly $3,000 for the finest birding binoculars on the market today. 

      “Birding binoculars” are specific to birding because the requirements are, well, very specific.

A little reading helps

      My favorite, most easily understood criteria for what constitutes birding binoculars comes from an article on the Audubon Society’s website, written by Wayne Mones, an avid birder since childhood who writes about binoculars for multiple publications.

      “Bird-worthy binoculars must focus quickly enough to “get on” a fast-moving bird,” he says. “They must have a field of view wide enough to locate birds rapidly and follow them in flight.

The cover of Audubon’s binocular package. See link below.

     “They must also provide accurate color rendition,” Mones continues, “have no observable distortion in the center of the field, and be bright enough to show subtle features in poor light and sharp enough to resolve fine detail.”

     Mones really knows his stuff, and the rest of his excellent article explains the technical basics of binoculars such as magnification, field of view and special considerations if you wear eyeglasses. Again, for the entire article, click here.


Beverly’s Birding Basics, a new feature on Flying Lessons, is meant to help new birders find their way. Last week, the first post in this series addressed why buying a good pair of binoculars is imperative to a fruitful birding experience. The third part will explore how to make the most of your binoculars. For a full library of Birding Basics links, click here. 

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July 22, 2020 5 comments
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Here are links to some of the deeper stories we’ve written for publications from the Washington Post to The Miami Herald exploring the frontiers of birding and avian research. This story for the Post was about the role of every-day birders in creating the largest citizen science project in the world. This piece for The Herald looked at the surprising strength of the Roseate Spoonbill in the midst of climate change. And this article and video for The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer is about how some adventurous hummingbirds are abandoning their migration and staying the winter in the U.S. Our latest story in the Washington Post is about a rescue mission for the imperiled Florida Grasshopper Sparrow. 

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Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Ruby-throated Hummingbird West Stockbridge, Massachusetts
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Hairy Woodpecker Prime Hook Refuge, Delaware
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Quotes for the birds

“When someone asks me why birds are so important to me, all I can do is sigh and shake my head, as if I’ve been asked to explain why I love my brothers.”

— Jonathan Franzen, novelist and renown birder from his National Geographic Magazine essay on the “Year of the Bird.”

Comments, Suggestions & Quips:

On How Birds Teach Humility:

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On the falling numbers of Wild Turkeys:

“I was just mentioning this to a friend, how I used to see Wild Turkeys every time I hit a dirt road, and now it’s almost rare.” -Jeff Brooks.

“There are a hundred times more turkeys than when I was a kid. Fake BS to shake down donations and public funding.” -Vance Shearer

 

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About us

We’re two journalists who’ve traded in our work in publishing and syndicated writing for following and photographing the birds. We live in Raleigh, NC, but are traveling the country every chance we get -- and are sharing the lessons birds are teaching us and the photos we take along the way.

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Why Flying Lessons

This website is about what we can learn from the birds around us. Some of the lessons are obvious, such as the way birds can be a barometer of environmental changes. Others are subtle, like the way you, as an observer, have to adapt to navigate the world in which birds operate. We ourselves still have much to learn about birding, a late-in-life pursuit that has captivated us in retirement. But we decided to start writing about the lessons and teachings as we’re finding our way, in hopes that our storytelling and photography will help to celebrate a captivating element of nature.

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Flying Lessons
  • Home
    • Our story
    • Birding and the Airstream
  • Photo Galleries
    • Photo Gallery Index
      • Belted Kingfishers Gallery
      • Counting Raptors
      • Birds of Glenwood Gardens
      • The Barred Owl Nextdoor
      • Magnificent Frigatebird
      • Woodpecker’s Nest
      • Red-shouldered Hawk Gallery
      • Blue-gray Gnatcatchers
      • In search of Warblers
      • Ecuador’s Hummingbirds Gallery
      • Purple Gallinule
      • Sandhill Cranes — and their chicks
      • White Ibis Gallery
      • Catching Birds in Flight
      • Roseate Spoonbills in all their glory
      • A Rookery for Storks
      • Shore Birds
      • Dining Out
      • Love is in the Air: Two Barn Swallows’ take on the Birds and the Bees
  • Videos
  • Closeups
    • Birds in Flight
  • Beverly’s Basics
  • All Posts
    • All Posts
    • Facebook Posts
    • Flying Lessons on Instagram
    • Bird of the Week
    • Sharing birding tips
  • Get email updates