Bird watching is a fascinating hobby and one taken very seriously indeed amongst its true dedicated followers. While this subject is absolutely huge in itself, this page is really only meant to deal with a very small part of that subject, which are the binoculars that are used by bird watchers to enable them to get in close visually without getting in close physically.

Bird watching binoculars used by most enthusiasts are generally those which provide the higest magnification without sacrificing field of view and image brightness. Some of the best names in optics are amongst some of the favorite choices of the more serious amongst the bird watching enthusiasts and are names you would readily recognise, such as Nikon, Steiner, Leica, Zeiss etc.

Features of Bird Watching Binoculars

There's an aspect to magnification which newcomers to the hobby generally err with and that is they thin they have to get the most powerful binoculars money can buy. In actual fact, with a higher power pair of binoculars you may end up actually seeing less. It may seem that the more magnification you have, the more you will see, but that is not necessarily the case. The usable magnification of binoculars is of course limited by the firmness and steadiness of the hands that hold them.

Bird watchers who have just run up a hill or climbed a ladder into an elevated hide will be out of breath and even less able to hold a pair of high power binoculars steady. So it is far better to opt for a medium range pair of bird watching binoculars.

The radius of the objective lenses (the ones that are at the other end of the binoculars to the ones you place your eyes to) make a difference to. A big one. The larger the objective lens, the greater their light gathering ability, meaning the brighter the image you will see as well as the greater the field of view.

A brighter image means you'll see what you're looking at more clearly and a wider field of view means that the perceived width of the image is greater than binoculars with smaller diatmeter objective lenses. The trade off is that the larger the objective lenses, the larger and heavier are the binoculars, making them all the more difficult to hold steady.

What is the Best Size of Bird Watching Binoculars?

A common usable size of bird watching binoculars is either 6x32 or 8x30 as these are medium range and of reasonably lightweight and compact size that will make be more comfortable on the eye when used for long periods. 7x50 binoculars are better suited to astronomical work than bird watching because of their larger and heavier dimensions, although this format does provide a very wide field of view of most binoculars.

Field of view is not always evident from the magnification and objective lens size and eyepiece design and focal length also play a part in determining a pair of bird watching binoculars field of view. For example, the Swarovski EL binoculars sport a full-sized 10x42 which has a field of view of 330 feet wide at 1000 yards. However, the much smaller 10x32 actually reveals a larger scene of 360 feet wide at 1000 yards. A pair of binoculars field of view is generally printed on the body and is often expressed as an angle, for instance 7 degrees as is seen on many good quality 8x42 models.