A Guide to Birding with Binoculars

When you want to see a bird up close, the binocular is the go-to tool for virtually everyone that enjoy bird watching. Their unrivaled portability coupled with their convenience makes them one of the best devices for spotting and identifying bids in their natural habitats.

Here I will give you some tips on how to use your binoculars to catch the best view of the birds you want to observe and study or just to look at how pretty they are.

Looking With Both Eyes

Binoculars have many advantages over other products that could be used for birding. One of the major advantages is that they will offer you a more realistic “3D view” of whatever you are observing. This can help tremendously when spotting or identifying birds. As you will be able to you your natural stereoscopic vision more naturally. Which you have subconsciously been practicing using your whole life. Compared to something like a spotting scope or even a high powered camera where you will only have a planar 2D view of whatever you are looking at. See more.


Binoculars come in a wide array of sizes and strengths. With different brands having a bunch of proprietary features. It can be extremely difficult to decide what binoculars you should buy. Luckily there are tons of resources out there to help you make that decision.

The Power Debate

The first decision you have to make when buying your binoculars is deciding what magnification you want. When looking at the description of a binoculars magnification power you will normally see a 2 number description. For example 8×42 is a very common magnification for binoculars. These number represent 8x magnification on whatever you are observing and 42mm diameter on the front lens

Most birders prefer a magnification between 7x and 10. The biggest things to consider when choosing your magnification is how far away birds are from you generally when you go out to watch birds. The 10x obviously offers more range but will not focus at shorter ranges making it unpleasant to look at anything that isn’t fairly far away. This fact causes a massive debate on whether somewhat shorter ranger binoculars are better than longer range ones but ultimately it’s going to depend on your personal use and the distances you are at most of the time.

Optical Quality

Another big thing to consider is the quality of the image you can get through your binoculars. This is going to be especially important if you are bird watching for any exacting scientific field work. A better optical quality is going to enable you to see small details you simply would not be able to see with a lese set of binoculars.


There are plenty of different variable to consider when birding with binoculars. I detailed some of them here but depending on your use and reason for birding there may be many other factors you might want to consider. Like lense diameter and some proprietary features.
Hopefully I have shone some light on this decision for you. Happy Birding! Check out this: http://thatbinocularguy.com/beginnings-universe-hubble-telescope/