Until clear, crisp, light weight image-stabilized binoculars come along, birders must find other means to keep our bins from bouncing and quivering. Posture and grip while scanning are important, but the best way to keep binoculars still is by bracing them, or you, with something solid.
Try Using Your Tripod – With most tripods, if you set an angled spotting scope to the correct height for your eye then tip the scope forward, the tripod handle winds up in a perfect position to brace binoculars for scanning (see photo #1). I use this position frequently while scanning shorebird flocks or while seawatching. Binoculars, with a field of view much wider than a scope’s, make it possible to cover large areas quickly. Quite frankly, truly steady binoculars may seem like a scope you are using with two eyes! Furthermore, if you sight a distant candidate that needs closer inspection, it’s merely a matter of flipping the scope up and into play.
Use a Walking Stick – A simple wooden walking stick is nothing more than a monopod without a mount on the top. Make yourself a walking staff of just the right height on which to rest your bins.
Car Tricks – When birding from the car, shut the engine off whenever you stop to scan. Not only does this make a huge difference in how much you can hear out the window, it eliminates the engine vibrations. Try this: roll down the car window so that your binoculars can rest comfortably on the top of the window, at exactly the correct height for viewing. A stable platform, and view, will result (see photo #2). If you are out of the car, rest your elbows or bins on the roof as you scan.
Use What’s Available – A railing, tree, or other sturdy object (even if it is the wrong height), can provide excellent support. Lean against a tree or pole, lift your binoculars and lightly rest the back of one of your hands against the trunk (see photo #3). Now your body is still, and your binoculars are, too. If a railing is too low to use as a binocular rest, lean your body or thighs against it for support.
Get Down – Sitting on a low stool, bench, or on the ground while resting your elbows on your knees is an excellent way to obtain a stable view through binoculars.
Learn through Photos
Use Your Tripod: “Use your tripod to brace your binoculars while scanning.” Photo by C. Hughes
Car Tricks: “Automobiles make great blinds, and observation platforms. By rolling the window part way down, the top of the window becomes an excellent binocular rest.” Photo by Don Freiday.
Use What's Available: “By leaning your body against a post or tree and actually resting your binoculars against it, binocular shake is minimized. This is especially helpful in windy conditions.” Photo by Don Freiday.
There’s also a new field guide that’s just been published. Guess what? I love it. The Birds of Costa Rica: A Field Guide is fabulous, and it’s likely to be with me every minute that I’m birding in this delightful little Central American country. Am I tossing out my beloved Stiles & Skutch? Not at all! After all, don’t you own more than one guide to North American birds? You’re probably like me, owning Sibley, Peterson, National Geographic, Kaufmann’s Focus Guide, a Golden Guide, and perhaps a few others. Two approaches are often incredibly valuable.
The Birds of Costa Rica: A Field Guide was written by Richard Garrigues, a highly respected Costa Rican resident birder. Garrigues’ book is not exactly like the earlier guide. It is smaller, with minimal text. For excellent, detailed natural history information, any curious birder will still thoroughly enjoy the earlier volume, now dated by about 20 years. But the newer book is not just an update of bird names, it features superior artwork by talented artist Robert Dean, larger paintings (just a few species per plate), text that faces the plates, range maps (a real rarity in field guides for neotropical countries), and succinct, excellent text that will help users identify birds. That’s the book’s stated purpose, and it accomplishes this goal extremely well.
Oh, I could quibble here and there – more drawing of immature birds might be nice, including offshore pelagic species would be helpful, perhaps sonograms of bird songs would be a nice addition – but these are really minor points. Costa Rica is not like North America, where we have a pile of field guides to compare and critique. This book fills a niche, and I will use it often. Since it arrived it’s been following me around the house. I leaf through a few pages before going to sleep. I’ll almost forget my breakfast cereal as I peruse a few more plates in the morning. I’m late heading out of the house to appointments as I think of some other species I want to check out. I haven’t had this much fun with a new book in a long, long time.
So what’s the big deal about Costa Rica? If you’re asking this, clearly you haven’t been there. Costa Rica is tropical. Costa Rica is diverse. The country is loaded with birds; this book, which skips pelagics, birds of far offshore Cocos Island, and extreme rarities, still includes over 820 species. There are many different habitats in a small geographical area, so a visiting birder can expect to see many, many species. It’s an exceptionally easy place to travel, with drinkable water from the tap in most areas, excellent standards of public health, a well-educated and environmentally sensitive populace, and an extremely gracious culture that places a high standard on hospitality. More than 25% of Costa Rica is protected as either a public or private park or reserve. From the east coast of the US, it’s a shorter flight to Costa Rica than it is to cities along the west coast of the US – it’s easy to get there.
So whenever you decide to head to Costa Rica, whether it’s your first visit or a return trip, be sure to take this new field guide along. You’ll enjoy identifying the many toucans, parrots, hummingbirds, tanagers, motmots, woodcreepers, antbirds, and other species that you’ll find there. You’ll still want the older Stiles & Skutch guide for its wealth of natural history information, but Garrigues (as I’ve already started to call this book) will be the perfect pocket companion in the field.
Garrigues, Richard and Robert Dean. The Birds of Costa Rica: A Field Guide. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2007. 416 pages, $29.95 paper, $65.00 cloth. ISBN: 978-0-8014-7373-9 (paper), 978-0-8014-4587-3 (cloth).