Double Vision

There are no short cuts to any place worth going. [sic] Beverly Sills

I am not a birder. I like birds. I love birds. I enjoy watching birds flying overhead or stalking the land for a fat and tasty (but ever-elusive) earthworm. But I find them frustrating, because I enjoy photography. One way to combine those two passions is to get out, find birds doing interesting things, and photographing them in the process, but birds seldom cooperate. Hence, I am no birder (but am occasionally a bird-brain).

I have an old pair of binoculars I use for watching birds here and there, but they are woefully inadequate. They have decent magnification (10x) and the optical quality is fair to middling, but once the object of my study is out beyond fifty feet or so, there’s not much to see or identify, so I decided to purchase a new set of binoculars for bird-watching.

Our county continues to be locked-down –  the sporting goods stores and shops are still closed – so I wasn’t able to shop around the way I normally would for a specialty item like binoculars or spotting scopes. Consequently, I went online and did some research and found a pair of binoculars that looked fantastic and which included mounting hardware for putting it on a base for truly rock-solid viewing. The price seemed reasonable and shipping was free, so I ordered the binoculars and a matching tripod.

Well, they arrived the other day and I must admit the purchase far surpassed my expectations. The magnification is double the old set (20x) and the optical clarity is superb. The only downside to the equipment, however, is that they are also far larger than what I had anticipated. They practically dwarf the Hubble telescope! No wonder a tripod was a recommended option.

With a little further reading, I hadn’t really ordered a pair of binoculars for bird-watching, but for astronomy. While the specs and dimensions were available online, I hadn’t really thought much about them. They looked “normal” in the picture. If the display had included a person for scale, I would have seen their relative size (and probably continued doing more research). 

As it is, I can’t even pull focus on anything less than sixty feet away. However, I looked out the front window and did manage to spot a robin wrestling with a wriggling, white, nutritious grub – in the next county over from us!

Since I also enjoy astronomy, I will probably hang onto these binoculars, even though they aren’t quite what I had intended. They will allow me to explore the world around us when we travel, and I have a device that allows me to attach my cell phone to the eyepiece and capture faraway vistas in ways I couldn’t before.

I think that’s sort of what the philosopher who said, “make lemonade from life’s lemons” means. One must be adaptable, and while I don’t have money to spend frivolously, I know how to make do and make use of what I have in hand, so where there’s no harm, there’s no foul.

When life doesn’t give me what I want, I find that I am often the source of that revolting development. I could blame others for misleading advertising, but the information I needed was there. I just didn’t pay adequate attention. The fault is mine, not theirs, and so the cost of the mistake is mine to bear, not theirs to carry. I know the company has a very liberal return policy, and I know they would not argue over a return of something that isn’t what I expected, but why should they?

I am actually satisfied with my purchase. It meets a need for which I hadn’t anticipated using it. It may well function better than I had thought possible when I go looking for eagles at work and play, for it has been my experience that raptors really don’t like people watching them, and I’ve never been able to get close enough to watch or to take decent wildlife photographs.

I will also be able to explore the heavens, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where I’ve never gone before – only at warp 20. I’ll be more than doubling my vision here in this, our valley.