Spotting Scopes

For beginning birdwatchers binoculars and a bird field guide are all that you need to get started. As you progress and learn more, you will find that having a local or regional bird list and seasonal visitation helpful in identifying birds that you see.

Once you are hooked, and after you try out a spotting scope for the first time, it will be come a "must have" piece of equipment. Mounted on a tripod and using a zoom eye piece, with a spotting scope you can see close ups and feather colors on ducks on a lake where without the scope you can't even see the ducks--maybe just a dark spot on the lake. You will soon find that it enhances your enjoyment of birdwatching and also of wildlife watching.

Learn more about spotting scopes and compare brands here.

More than an RV, a mobile birdwatching blind

Birdwatching is a perfect activity for RVers. If you haven't yet taken an interest in our avian friends, consider these advantages RVers have for combining birding with your travels.

• You can use your RV as a "blind," much as a hunter would, only using binoculars or a spotting scope instead of a rifle. Birds do not identify the boxy, lifeless, thing as a predator and are less likely to fly away. You can then watch from inside your rig, especially on cold, windy days, with the comfort of home.
• Using your RV as a blind is especially functional when driving along birding trails or on wildlife refuges where you can creep up on birds without frightening them
• Hang feeders, different kinds to attract different birds, from your awning or from a nearby tree limb to attract birds to your campsite.
• Hummingbird feeders with suction cups that attach it directly to a window bring hummingbirds up close.
• When you travel to different regions or altitudes, you will find different birds than you see around your home range. And with the seasonal changes, different migratory birds passing through.
• Stop at the welcome center or tourist bureau of new states you enter and pick up their bird list, birders local viewing guides, and a map and information of their birding trails, which most states have now established.
• Take walks around your campground or on trails and you will be surprised at how many birds have discovered that RVers are bird-friendly, and often provide feeders for them.

Keep a record of what you see, or enter the findings in you bird book. Soon you will see yur life list swell with new discoveries.

Bosque del Apache: The Mardi Gras of birdwatching

By Bob Difley

Tens of thousands of snow geese, Canadian geese, sandhill cranes, and ducks of all varieties fill the skies, chattering and flapping in a wild cacophony of quacks, honks, and croaks. This is Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, nine miles south of the New Mexico town of Socorro in the Rio Grande Valley less than an hour and a half from Albuquerque. It is winter, unlike summer when all is quiet in this riparian refuge surrounded by dry, barren, high desert.

The Spanish explorers, often encountering Apaches camped in the riverside forest, gave this place its name, which means "woods of the Apache." No longer a respite for Apaches, the refuge is an important--and critical--wintering home for thousands of sandhill cranes that arrive in November and leave in February. Thousands of other migratory birds also find shelter and food in the refuge. Watching the sunset "fly in" and the dawn "fly out," when some magical trigger catapults thousands of snow geese simultaneously into the air, emptying the pond in seconds, is a spectacle you will not soon forget.

Modern birds are not the first to discover the refuge. Paleontologists have discovered fossils from prehistoric hoofed animals from the Miocene era--10 to 15 million years ago. But for the birder, the refuge is one of the nations's premier birdwatching destinations, and the Festival of the Cranes, in its 22nd year of celebrating their return, is the birders' equivalent of the Mardi Gras. In 2009 the festival is November 17 - 22 and this year's schedule will include over 100 lectures, workshops, tours, hikes, and hands-on activities.

Like Quartzsite is a "must see" for the general RVer, Bosque del Apache is a "must see" for birdwatchers. Learn more about the Bosque at their Friends Website that includes directions, events, bird spotting lists and numbers and other refuge information. The 30-site Birdwatchers RV Park just outside the refuge at San Antonio and 93-site Socorro RV Park south of Socorro are conveniently close campgrounds, though there are additional choices in and around Socorro.

Experts take the guesswork out of choosing binoculars

By Bob Difley

If you don't have the time to personally test 20 or 30 pairs of binoculars in order to choose the right one, you might want to check out this report by 40 reviewers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that tested 78 binoculars. Each tester compared at least ten models, with each binocular examined by at least ten reviewers. A core team of five experts examined every single pair of binoculars.

Weight, close-focus distance, and field of view at 15 feet are measured objectively, while other features are rated on a five-point scale: image quality, depth of field, ergonomics and "eyeglass friendliness." Editors rank binoculars in order of overall quality in four price ranges. It is interesting to note that the editors say binoculars in the $500 to $1,000 range are not worth the extra money over those in the $200 to $500 range. You can read the full report here.

Cheepers Birding: Inexpensive birdwatching tours

Even RVers like to get away from their rigs once in a while. If you are both an RVer and a birder, Cheepers Birding makes it possible to both get away and do some birding in many of the world’s best birding locations. Jim and Cindy Beckman, both avid birders, started their birding tour business with the idea of making birding trips accessible and inexpensive and have accomplished that goal.

They currently offer trips to places like Ecuador, Panama, Belize, and Costa Rica. How are they able to cut the prices of major tour companies? From years of traveling on their own birding trips they have established contacts with expert local guides in many of the world's best birding locations and are able to work directly with them, cutting out the middle men. They also do not use the highest priced resort hotels, but rather quality local hostelries that they can book at much lower prices and pass the savings on to their tour guests.

Both Jim and Cindy are members of the Board of Directors of the Dayton, Ohio Audubon Society, are retired, their company's only employees, and have no desire to build a large company with huge profits. You can find out more about their trips on their Web site.

Birding radio shows by BirdNote

A terrific and efficient way to learn more about birds in general and about specific birds you have seen is to go online to one of the excellent Web sites that offers educational information on bird species as well as identification tips. One such site is BirdNote.

But BirdNote is more than a Web site, it is a radio series about the intriguing habits and activities of birds out in the natural world. Each show is scheduled to coincide with the time of year when you can see or hear the featured bird, one each month, that includes bird mating calls, predator alarms, and interesting and educational anecdotes. They can be heard on the NPR radio station KPLU live, or you can listen to any of the previously produced two-minute shows online at BirdNote's Web site in the archive files, or with this link directly to the podcast archives.

The radio shows, created by bird experts from Tune In to Nature.org, produce outstanding radio stories with rich sound recordings in an effort to connect the ways and needs of birds to the lives of birdwatchers.

RVers and birdwatching: A natural fit

RVers and birdwatching go together like potlucks and campfires. Though your own backyard can be a source for a variety of birds, traveling in your RV opens up whole new areas and a whole new selection of birds to identify. And any birdwatcher, whether an English librarian or a tattooed, bald-headed guy towing a Harley behind his RV, identifying a new species of bird to add to your life list is great fun.

With the reinvigorating of this birdwatching blog, we will look at some exceptional birdwatching spots around the country, some locations where you can go to see birds that you won't see anywhere else in the country, and state birding trails that are springing up all around the US (the suits have discovered that birders travel to see birds and spend money when there).

When new equipment comes to the birdwatching market, we will let you know about it, like new binoculars, spotting scopes, CDs, and DVDs, and we'll take a look at some of the birdwatching Web sites, both national and local.

So check back regularly, and find out how you can use your RV to discover one of the nation's fastest growing hobbies, and the fun of watching those feathered critters do their thing.