We all wanted this bird badly, and it was coming in, albeit slowly, in response to the imitated whistle of an Amazonian Pygmy-owl. The bird we were after was the spectacular Band-tailed Manakin, saturated with brilliant red on the head and blazing yellow on the belly, with jet black wings. A stunner of a bird.
Suddenly it was there, and just as suddenly, as we all rapidly lifted our binoculars, it flew again. Nobody saw it well.
We kept up with the owl call, and again the manakin came in – and flew immediately when we saw it. Why was this happening? When it was not near us, the manakin seemed perfectly content spending many minutes in one place – we could hear it singing, along with several others nearby.
I’m sure this has happened to you, probably many times. The bird just gets into view, and you lift your bins and it is. . . not there anymore.
Binoculars held at the ready, where raising them to the eyes can be done quickly and with minimal upward motion. Photo by Don Freiday.
Perhaps the manakin’s response had to do with eight pairs of binoculars being raised rapidly all at once. Not perhaps, in fact – that was exactly the problem. Eight anythings suddenly rising one to two feet rapidly and in unison will startle birds.
Even one rapidly lifted binocular might spook a bird, and I suspect that’s because in nature anything going up rapidly is a danger signal – a squirrel scurrying up a tree, a deer quickly lifting its head because it heard something, or a startled bird flushing. Eight simultaneously lifted binoculars simulate an entire flushing flock of birds. It seems a little unreasonable to expect a bird to stick around if it thinks every other bird in the neighborhood is fleeing.
When birding, all motions should be slow. If you think you are about to lay your binoculars on an elusive species, bring them up near your face so that when the bird comes into view, you need move them hardly at all to get them to your eyes. My favorite at-the-ready position has the binoculars positioned so the oculars are just under my chin. This way, I’m not breathing into the lenses and fogging them up, and they are also protected from precipitation if it is falling.
When the bird appears, I concentrate on raising the bins slowly and precisely to my face, and most of the time, voila – the bird is still there to focus on. Try it!