I recently had the opportunity to introduce a beginner to birdwatching - and also binocular use. While I had the privilege to learn about binoculars at an early age, many folks really don't know about em. As tweeters know, the basics of focusing, ect. are pretty simple.

Back in the mid-seventies I co-taught a 'Bird Identification' class at Fairhaven College in Bellingham. The students ranged from 20 to 70 something years old. This was a pretty hot shot bunch of learners - really interested, and also mostly unexperienced in binocular use. After a few field trips, I began to wonder about their ability to see what they were looking at.

So I started playing tricks on them one day. "Oh, did you see the red bill on that Song Sparrow ?", I would ask. " Oh Yes ", many answered. After a few more such deceptive moves, with similar results, and realizing that about half the students couldn't see worth beans thru their binocs, I hatched up a scheme.

The following class started with me holding up sheet of newspaper sales advertising in the classroom. One by one I had the students come up to a line and read the ads thru their binocs.( Ads are good because of the various print sizes , and varying focus distances of binocs). This was when the grinning and squirming stated for those who had been pretending they could see something. You really can't see how someone else sees, so this trick works well - the student can read it or not. Then on to the details of focus ect., for each student ,and maybe finding out that their binoculars are a piece of cross-eyed, scratched up junk, or whatever- some students had way better equipment than I did. Usually it was just learning how to adjust the things.

Anyway, the following field day was dramatically different - alot of the students were about as excited about seeing clearly with binoculars as they were about what they were seeing. Bird class got a lot better after that.

Jeff Gibson, Everett Wa