By BILL CHAISSON
Of a Feather
Birdwatching is the most or one of the most popular hobbies in the United States. However, birdwatchers tend to talk birds and bird gear with each other, leaving those outside the proverbial guild in the dark. The non-birdwatcher may find themselves non-plussed by the idea of having to buy a Christmas gift for their oddball cousin. You know the one I’m talking about; he sits at family gatherings looking out the window and suddenly says things like, “Huh, a Carolina wren. I didn’t know they got this far north,” to no one in particular.
Birdwatching can be either gear-heavy or gear-light, depending on the interests and personality of the birdwatcher. The gear-light enthusiast needs little more than a bird guide and a pair of binoculars, so let’s have a look at those first.
I started out with Roger Tory Peterson’s “Field Guide to Birds” back in 1971 and I’m still rather loyal to it. Peterson’s guide was “the one that started it all.” The first edition in 1934 broke ground with its portable size and schematic drawings, which included black arrows pointing at field marks that could be seen at a distance. Relatively lightweight binoculars were just being made available at the time and this technological advance made spotting birds in the field at a distance much easier.
Books about birds before Peterson’s “Guide” tended to be large and filled with anecdotal natural history essays. In contrast, Peterson gave you just enough information about appearance, distribution, and behavior to make an identification. Although the Audubon Society and other non-profits produced small, field-worthy guides similar to Peterson’s, the original remained popular through six editions.
It has arguably been superseded by David Sibley’s guides. Whereas Peterson’s first field guide covered only the United States east of the 100th meridian (one for western birds first arrived in 1941), Sibley began with a guide in 2000 that covered all of North America. He has subsequently issued separate guides for eastern and western birds.
Sibley crams more onto a page than Peterson did. He often includes regional variants of widespread species and illustrations of many birds in flight. (Peterson had offered only raptors and waterfowl in flight.)
These general guides are potential gifts for beginning birders. For more advanced hobbyist you should look for a regional guide. There is, for example, a “Birds of Vermont and New Hampshire” field guide by Stan Tekiela. He arranges his birds by color, like the Audubon Guides, rather than systematically, like Peterson and Sibley. Some local field guides are valuable because they provide information about specific locations to find birds with narrow habitat requirements. For example, rails are associated with marshes of a certain size.
Another variety of specialty guide is one that focuses on a particular taxonomic group. I own guides for hawks, for waterfowl, and for warblers. You would have to know a little about the details of your gift recipient’s hobby get the right book. Nothing would be more useless to a warbler fanatic than a guide to waterfowl.
Binoculars have done nothing but improve since the 1930s. They have become progressively more lightweight and lenses have been coated with filtering films. The standard magnification for birdwatchers is 7×35, which means that the lenses magnify 7 times and that the field of view at a distance of 100 yards is 35 yards wide. Other popular combinations are 7×50, which gathers more light than a 7×35 set, and 8X40, which magnifies more. Both tend to be larger and therefore slightly heavier.
Features to look for include a lever on the focus ring, which allows for easy adjustment with gloved hands, and padding on the exterior,which makes knocking the internal mirrors out of alignment less likely when you drop your binoculars or they bang against that rock outcrop that you’re climbing.
Perhaps the next step into the world of birdwatcher gear is ownership of a spotting scope. These are most popular with people who love to watch waterfowl, but they are useful for watching shorebirds or really anything that is going to be hundreds of yards away.
Spotting scopes are telescopes with modifications for bird watching. Like telescopes they are mounted on tripods. The eyepiece (what you look into) is often mounted at an angle for convenience in the field, and magnification is between 15x and 60x. The latter is considerably less than that of a telescope made for astronomy, but greater than most binoculars. Some models zoom through several magnifications and some have interchangeable lenses. The zoom feature is going to be easier to deal with if you take into the field often.
If your birdwatcher is homebound and is looking into their backyard from an enclosed porch or sitting room, they might enjoy a spotting scope in addition to binoculars, because the scope allows you to see minute details in the plumage and appearance of individual birds.
Another type of gear is the bird recording guide. There are now apps for birdsongs that can be installed on mobile phones, but you can also buy recordings in several media to listen to in high fidelity at home. Some taxa, like the wood warblers, are far more frequently heard than seen, and knowing their songs is invaluable. Once you recognize the song in the field, you then know what you are looking for 50 feet up in the canopy. Some birds — like many of the nondescript and furtive sparrows — can best be identified by song. There are also regional variants in the songs and calls of some widespread birds. Where the populations come together and hybridize, they may only be identified by their songs. Eastern and western screech owls, for example, look identical, but have completely different calls. And in the Midwest Baltimore and Bullock’s orioles meet and hybridize and the songs of their progeny was vary widely.
I am a gear-light person myself, so I will bring it in for a landing here and note that clothes are not inconsequential. Essentially anything with a lot of pockets is worth looking into. The pockets should be large enough to fit a field guide and it is nice if they are on the inside of a coat or vest in order to keep the book dry(ish).
If nothing else, when you present your birdwatcher friend or relative with a relevant gift , they may be astonished to find out that you were paying any attention to their hobby at all. That’s a gift in itself.
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