Using Binoculars

Some very good ideas to teach and encourage kids to use binoculars. Although the "focus" is on birds (oh yeah, that one was intentional), you can use these ideas when viewing any wildlife. In addition to International Migratory Bird Day, May is Be Bear Aware month. Encouraging the public to use binoculars promotes safe and responsible viewing of bears and other wildlife. Although, the idea in this article (from Montana Audubon) with chocolate chip cookies is not advisable in bear country.

(Excerpted from an email by Susan Gilchrist, IMBD Coordinator)

You can apply the activity ideas to training for new volunteers or teaching beginning birding yourself, or perhaps you have additional ideas to add to the collection.There are basic instructions available in a myriad of places, including the instructions that usually come with a new pair. The Flying WILD Educator's Guide features an outdoor component which includes a very simple breakdown of how teachers can teach their students to use binoculars. An article in Birds of Britain goes into some extra details such as magnification, wearing binoculars, cleaning them, etc. Once you are past the mechanics of how to focus binoculars, there are some exercises you can use to have students practice using binoculars in a set course that pretty well guarantees success. Having a successful experience with binoculars is the best encouragement for getting new potential birders out in the field.

• WBCI (Wisconsin Bird Conservation Initiative) suggests having kids focus binoculars on a poster or a placemat with pictures of Wisconsin birds put up on a bulletin board across the room. Many birding teachers use pictures of birds. Whether the pictures of birds are grouped on a poster or posted singly, the benefit of this idea is that the "birds" hold still while the student gets the binoculars focused and lined up.


• You can have the students use the binoculars to read the names of the birds underneath pictures of birds too, whether the names appear on the poster or you post them by the picture yourself.


• Paul Belanger and the folks at Montana Audubon have a couple of great tricks up their sleeves. They have students use binoculars to read some instructions at the other end of the room. The instructions can help transition the group from indoors to outside, preparing them to go outside birding. For example, the instructions might read:

1. Read these instructions SILENTLY to yourself.
2. When you have finished reading the instructions, pass the binoculars to your partner if they have not read them.
3. With your partner, go get a piece of unused paper, a pencil, and something solid to write on (a clipboard or a book).
4. Sit together and wait silently for further instructions.

• Another fabulous idea from Montana Audubon is to post parts of a chocolate chip cookie recipe along a trail so the students move from station to station in teams. Standing behind a line, they have to use their binoculars to read the directions to make cookies. If they write down the parts of the recipe right, they will end up with a complete recipe to take home and the immediate reward of a cookie to eat on the spot!


• Beth Almeras from the National Wildlife Federation shared the suggestion that you identify one person to be the "Bird" (put a feather in the person's cap or provide a special bird hat to identify the chosen one). The "Bird" can "chirp" loudly from the bushes until the students in the group can all zero in on him or her (or the cap!) with binoculars.


• At the Green Mountain Audubon Center in Vermont, Bridget Butler said they used the Audubon plush birds to help kids learn to focus binoculars. First they selected birds for which they had both the plush bird and the Waterford Press field card. Then they posted the plush birds along the edge of a field in trees and bushes or on the ground, as appropriate. The students focused their binoculars on a plush bird, then successfully identified it using the field card. The educators worked the students up to using a beginning field guide for bird identification. Working with preschoolers, kids taped together empty toilet paper rolls in pairs of "binoculars". They enjoyed both making and using the "binoculars" on fantasy adventures or real field trips. This is a good exercise for beginning birding because looking through the tubes familiarizes the children with the idea of focusing on one target with their vision, and being able to find through the tubes whatever they were just looking at with their naked eyes is good practice for binoculars.


• With middle level students, perhaps you can introduce binoculars with some physics by engaging them with prisms first and some explanations of how magnifying lenses, telescopes, and binoculars work to help us see details that are small or far away. Binoculars have been used for other things besides bird watching; they can be used for guiding people through wilderness, for military maneuvers, spying, astronomy, and more. Who was Galileo and what did he have to do with binoculars?


• Theresa Cross of the Louisiana Dept. of wildlife and Fisheries says the key in teaching the use of binoculars is to convince the students that it's okay to say they don't get it, so they don't say they can see what you ask them to look at just to make you happy. Having a successful experience using binoculars is a good step towards feeling empowered to go birding.

Hunting Facts

21.2 Million U.S. Citizens Hunted in 1994.
9.4% of U.S. citizens 16 years and older hunted in 1994.
Over 16 million activity days (9.4 big game, 5.1 small game, and 1.6 migratory birds) were spent on national forests and grasslands.
The percent of females that hunted more than doubled between 1985 and 1990.
Being close to nature is growing in importance for hunting motivation.
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