Tropical Bird Watching Basics & Birding Tips
As birds go about searching for food there is a frenzy of movement. Birds are flying across to trees, moving through vegetation looking for insects or making the most of a fruiting fig tree.
Catching these movements with the naked eyes allow me to quickly home in on who is in the neighborhood. Next is to use the binoculars with good field of vision to get a close up on the bird. The Swarovski 8.5x42 EL is one of the best top line binoculars and one of the important investments that I have made. I started with an inexpensive no-brand 7x42 binocular that gave me very good field of vision but alas the lens lack multi-coating and it failed in robustness.
When it broke, I move a little upwards to 8x30 pair of "bins" but its short coming only made me resolve to look for a top line pair of dream bins. Watching birds is more demanding on the quality of binoculars because birds are a lot smaller than racing horses or military troop movements. Color and other subtle marking make all the difference between bird sub-species.
Recognizing shapes in foliage is a habit that many good birders pick up. It's the instinctive ability to notice the distinct shape of a bird perched on a tree or on a branch through the sunlight in a clutter of leaves.
This acquired skill is especially useful when the bird is keeping still. Cuckoos, raptors, shrikes and many passerines (perching birds) will come to a stand still so it helps to be able to notice the outlines even in a busy background. Once I have located the bird with my bins, it's important to note a prominent marker or object next to the bird like the tree branch elbow, flower or leaf patch before getting off the bins so you can still locate the distant spot. Keeping this spot in view, I would quickly use the scope to acquire the bird. Moving and focusing a scope in one fluid motion takes practice because every precious second counts.
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