28 HOW TO STUDY BIRDS 



it is necessary to secure certain pieces of apparatus,- 

 notably a field glass and a handbook of birds. As 

 to the first, I would state emphatically that it is not at 

 all necessary to purchase anything expensive or cum- 

 bersome. An ordinary opera glass will do very well. 

 Combine the qualities of a reasonably high power 

 and a light weight. It does not necessarily follow 

 that a glass is so very " strong " because it is heavy. 

 What one wants in a glass is mainly to be able to see 

 birds clearly enough to identify them, and a good 

 ordinary glass of fair size, the best one can get for a 

 moderate expenditure, will suffice for all-round work. 

 Such a glass is as good as any other for work in a 

 swamp, shrubbery, or foliage, where the birds, to be 

 seen at all, are encountered at close range. 



Under conditions of this sort a very high-power 

 glass is not only unnecessary, but distinctly not so 

 good, as it is very hard to get the bird in the field of 

 vision and in focus. With the ordinary opera glass 

 one can pick up a bird in the thicket almost instantly, 

 whereas with the other it becomes a vexatious hunt, 

 and by the time one has got the range, the bird may 

 very likely have departed. 



For work at long range in trie open, an 8-power 

 binocular is a wonderful aid. With one of these I 

 remember watching a flock of those exceedingly wary 

 birds, great black-backed gulls. They were at the 

 water's edge on a very wide beach at low tide, and I 

 was peering over the sand-dunes, probably three hun- 

 dred yards away. They did not see me, and were 



