> hospital on a ventilator due to septic shock in September and when I came
to
> myself, I had lost most of the vision in my right eye. At first, I
> despaired, thinking my birding days were over. I've tried using my
> binoculars but while the left eye works, I don't see clearly through the
> binocs with it. I think the screwy right one is throwing everything off.
> Rahne Kirkham
> Federal Way, Washington

Rahne, It may take your brain some time to adjust to the loss of sight in
your right eye, especially if your right eye was previously your dominant
eye. I've always had poor vision, correctable, at best, to 20/40 (left eye)
and 20/50 (right eye). I once wrote an essay about birding with poor
eyesight. Rereading it now, after not looking at it for a few years, I see
it needs some serious editing, but maybe it will help cheer you up.
(Please do not forward or circulate without permission:)

Birding with Bad Eyes

by Kelly Cassidy



Birding is a hobby best suited for people with excellent vision. I am not
one of those people; I belong to the small fraternity of semi-blind birders
who lack the common sense to take up a hobby better suited to their physical
ability. If you, like me, have trouble recognizing close friends from across
a street, you may have dismissed birding as a hobby beyond your
capabilities. Don't be too hasty. Poor vision is no impediment to birding
unless you want to identify birds smaller than an ostrich. If you long to
see a warbler in the wild, birding can still bring great pleasure, much like
the joy some people get from banging their heads against brick walls.



A novice birder with poor vision should proceed along much the same route as
the more typical birder, with a few caveats. Many beginners, for example,
like to go on outings with more experienced birders. If you are
visually-impaired, birding with the normally-sighted has its drawbacks.
People who have always read road signs with ease may become exasperated at
your inability to see birds that don't come running to a sack of
breadcrumbs. For your part, you may become frustrated at rarely being able
to see the birds everyone else sees. On group outings, I often find myself
mutely squinting at hordes of bird-like leaves while my keen-eyed
compatriots discuss the diagnostic features of the rarity in "plain view."
When I tire of the phrase "You mean you can't see that?" I am often tempted
to nod knowingly and pretend I can see the lifer everyone else is excited
about. Inevitably, when I've given in to the temptation, I've been caught
studying a birdless tree after my companions have watched the bird of
interest fly away. Better to admit to bad eyesight than be thought mentally
deranged.



Despite its frustrations, birding with the normally-sighted has enough
advantages that you should force yourself to take at least a few such trips.
You will see more birds, because you will know where to point your
binoculars. If you have trouble driving in the dark or in high-traffic
areas, or if you can't drive at all, you will be able to travel to places
you otherwise might have difficulty reaching. I suggest you avoid group
expeditions in which the pattern is a succession of long drives and quick
stops. You won't have enough time to see the birds for yourself. If you
don't drive, or don't drive very often, you can forget how expensive it is
to operate a car, so, if you ride with someone on a birding outing, remember
to offer a generous donation to the driver for gas.



All birders who can hear should learn bird songs, but birding by ear is
especially valuable if you have poor vision. Start with an instructional
tape, not an encyclopedic collection of songs. An instructional tape, like
the excellent Peterson's Birding by Ear, won't include all of a region's
bird songs, but will teach you a methodology for categorizing songs.
Paradoxically, while poor vision gives a powerful incentive to learn bird
songs, it will increase the difficulty of transferring your tape lessons to
the field. Before you can be confidant of auditory identifications, you must
go through the process of listening to birds in the field, attempting an
identification based on sound alone, and checking your guess with a visual
identification. For difficult songs, you must do this field testing many
times before you can trust your auditory identifications. A birder with good
eyesight can verify auditory identification easier than a birder with poor
eyesight. You will either need the patience of moss as you struggle through
the field testing or you will have to go birding with a kind soul who will
help with the visual confirmation.



No matter how hard birding by ear may seem at first, persistence will
eventually pay off. My field book would be dominated by white space if it
only included the birds I saw. For many of my trips, the majority of species
on my list are "heard only." All birders, beginner or not, far-sighted or
sporting coke-bottle lenses, should carry a field book on every trip. Mine
is a hard-backed, pocket-sized booklet with waterproof paper. For each stop
on a birding trip, I record date, location, birding companions, start and
end times, weather, site description, and species list. My species list
indicates whether I heard, saw, or both heard and saw the bird. If I bird
with other people, I also record what the others saw that I missed. That
part of the list can be disheartening, since it's often much longer than my
own list, but it's worthwhile to keep a record of what to expect for future
occasions.



Speaking of a species list, should you keep a life list if your vision
prevents you from seeing in a year what the average birder might see on one
good trip? Definitely; one of the wonderful aspects of birding is that you
go at your own pace. You will take longer to reach your goals than your
eagle-eyed birding friends, but so what? It's your list, and, depending on
how bad your vision is, it can be a great incentive to watch your diet. Too
much cholesterol and you risk dying before you reach that magic 500 number.



The birds that you will have the hardest time adding to your life list will
be different from the birds that elude a birder with good eyesight. In
Seattle, where I lived for many years, golden-crowned kinglets are as common
as raindrops. For me, they are about as easy to see as individual raindrops
in a downpour. In contrast, adding a rare great gray owl to my list involved
little more than a long car ride to a known nesting location.



If the birding hobby clutches you in its talons and you want to contribute
to bird knowledge beyond your own experience but despair over your physical
limitations, consider that there is more to birding than rarities.
Surprising gaps in knowledge exist about easily-seen species. Even with poor
vision, you can add to the body of information about arrival and departure
dates, breeding evidence, and other aspects of bird behavior that rely more
on patient observation and detailed notes than good eyesight. If you have
computer skills, you can volunteer to help map bird ranges or input data.
Your local Audubon Society or other bird conservation group will have
information about volunteer opportunities.



The final and most important advice for all birders, however, is to get out
there and bird! In hardly any time after I began seriously birding in
Washington state, I added all six of the wrens that regularly occur in the
state to my "heard only" list. Years passed and I eventually moved five of
them to my "saw" list. The invisible, loud canyon wren taunted me through
many eye-watering hours of searching basalt cliffs. One pleasant summer day,
on a birding stroll down a creek bed of tumbled boulders in southeastern
Washington, three canyon wrens popped up on a rock so close I had to back up
to focus the binoculars. Even with my pathetic eyesight, I could see the
brood patch on the female. Sometimes, success in birding, as in life, is
merely being there.