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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Passive IR binoculars used in birding? (1 Viewer)

Ruff

Ruff

Two birds in one.
Just a random thought perhaps, but infrared binoculars are becoming rather easy to find and affordable in my market these days (at least in comparison to past years) and I'm wondering how useful they might be for birding. OK, this is in large part a search for an excuse to buy one, but would they be good for locating birds like owls and such in the dark? Locating flocks of birds at night in hopes of observing them at dawn? What are the listing rules for a Great Grey Owl observed as a heat signature? Do professional ornithologists use them?
 
If you mean thermal imagers for detecting heat then any that are going to be useful at more than a few meters range are going to be very expensive, ten of thousands of dollars.

If you mean near-visible infrared then they are what I would call affordable but they can't be used passively, they have to be used with matching IR lighting, again affordable. Most night vision stuff you see on TV nature documentaries is of this nature. The BBC do have a very good thermal camera they use for various nature programmes and have loaned to researchers but that is worth over £250,000.
 
Hi Ruff

There's quite a lot of info on three of the cheapest units here

http://infrared-birding.blogspot.fr/p/welcome-to-infrared-birding.html

AFAIK there's a lot of people trying this technology out for nocturnal wildlife surveys with varying degrees of success.

The cameras and viewers have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years and prices have come down considerably. They have huge potential advantages over other survey equipment in terms of lack of disturbance and viewing conditions (rain, fog, dark etc.), and with better quality units can detect animals over great distances.

I used a totally out-dated one years ago and was amazed to see rabbits clearly over hundreds of yards on a very dark night (and cows a couple of miles away!!).
 
Torchepot said:
Hi Ruff

There's quite a lot of info on three of the cheapest units here

http://infrared-birding.blogspot.fr/p/welcome-to-infrared-birding.html

AFAIK there's a lot of people trying this technology out for nocturnal wildlife surveys with varying degrees of success.

The cameras and viewers have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years and prices have come down considerably. They have huge potential advantages over other survey equipment in terms of lack of disturbance and viewing conditions (rain, fog, dark etc.), and with better quality units can detect animals over great distances.

I used a totally out-dated one years ago and was amazed to see rabbits clearly over hundreds of yards on a very dark night (and cows a couple of miles away!!).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. Yes the stuff now available to the unwashed North American public is quite impressive and, in terms of quality optics, somewhat affordable. Canadian birds are of course quite well insulated against heat loss so it would be a near thing, I mean in the dark of winter when you would most want passive IR.
 
Torchepot said:
Hi Ruff

There's quite a lot of info on three of the cheapest units here

http://infrared-birding.blogspot.fr/p/welcome-to-infrared-birding.html

AFAIK there's a lot of people trying this technology out for nocturnal wildlife surveys with varying degrees of success.

The cameras and viewers have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years and prices have come down considerably. They have huge potential advantages over other survey equipment in terms of lack of disturbance and viewing conditions (rain, fog, dark etc.), and with better quality units can detect animals over great distances.

I used a totally out-dated one years ago and was amazed to see rabbits clearly over hundreds of yards on a very dark night (and cows a couple of miles away!!).
Click to expand...

Couldn't get the link to work until today, quite interesting results and pretty much what I thought would happen. The binos I have in mind should work even better, especially because they would be at least one generation ahead of 2015 (if not several)- although they do not of course allow for photography. Anyway, I've never looked into it, but I do believe that IR ability has been taken out of smart phones (there was concern it would give the bad people a cheap tech advantage over security forces that use active IR), but it can be used in at least some of the older ones.
 
I've read the whole blog now (I think) - kept discovering new bits by scrolling through. There's several outings in sub-zero temperatures and the results are quite impressive. It appears that sunny days are the biggest problem.

The Therm-app HZ with the 35mm lens produced the best results (and is featured in a Black Friday sale on the Therm-app website).

It got my mouth watering looking at the heat signatures from tree cavities - as woodpeckers, owls and small mammals are all of interest to me.

I know that the cameras have been used to quickly tell if nest boxes are occupied, but the whole tree cavity thing was new to me (though obvious now that I think about it).

The issue of not being able to find the location of the hot spot when following up with binoculars could possibly be solved by mounting the device in tandem with a spotting scope and presetting both on a known hot spot.

I like the idea that you're only paying for the camera and lens and using android devices for the screen etc.

If I had some spare cash I'd be VERY tempted :eek!:
 
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Thermal binoculars... sounds like the out of date and overly expensive FLIR units. The best value systems currently would be a 3+magnification monoculars from Pulsar. The pixel sizes are shrinking down (25, now 17, soon to be 12micron) so the lenses can give higher powers or cheaper units for the same magnification. The germanium lenses are the really costly element of these devices. I have watched the prices fall dramatically over the past few years and am very close to diving in. I know there are Owls locally and have only once caught one out hunting on my night vision. The magnification and resolution might not sound amazing (compared to what we find in DSLR etc) but as a spotter and possibly coming mines with another night vision system (digital or intensified) should provide a very powerful system for nocurnal nature observation . Videos of the latest units are very clear, many people are looking for animals at hundreds of meters, should easily see birds at 10s meters ( in trees) As you list, there is a lot of nocurnal animals and birds out there that most people are unaware of. Revolutionary stuff!

PEterW
 
Interesting review of one here.. http://www.mammalwatching.com/2017/09/20/gear-review-pulsar-xq50-thermal-imaging-scope/
Note the “why don’t birders use these” comment. Ignore the talk of “generations”, this might be confusion with image intensifier systems. Pulsar are made in Eastern Europe. FLIR are US made and only 9Hz refresh rate FLIR units appear to be available outside the US... you need 30-+Hz update rate if you’re going to be looking at wildlife, especially things like bats! These systems have a native field of view and then digital zoom to look closer.. as the reviewer points out. The more expensive ones have a larger number of pixels that can give you both zoom and field of view. They appear to be on the cusp of wider uptake outside of the hunting community.

Peter
 
Thanks for the link Peter - quite envious of some of the critters people are finding with this gear!

I think that's the point that is sometimes missed - these devices offer an unparalleled means of finding warm blooded (particularly nocturnal) creatures. They're not going to give very satisfying views of animals but greatly increase the chances of locating them. In this respect the more powerful lenses and high resolution of the more expensive units is perhaps not so relevant?

I've only used them on a handful of occasions (many years ago too) but I do recall that looking at a screen was much easier than looking through an eyepiece - especially at night.
 
It depends on your surroundings, if wide open fields and plains then you’ll want high power to maximise your detection range. If in woods and close in then a lower power will give a wider field of view that will make it easier to scan with. I would go for an eyepiece for covertness, light leakage could alert things of your presence. The next year or two will be interesting to see what price these things finally reach for good entry level performance. Certainly interested in more reports from people.

Peter
 
Ruff said:
Thanks for the link. Yes the stuff now available to the unwashed North American public is quite impressive and, in terms of quality optics, somewhat affordable. Canadian birds are of course quite well insulated against heat loss so it would be a near thing, I mean in the dark of winter when you would most want passive IR.
Click to expand...

This is an interesting topic, but I wonder what you mean by "the unwashed
North American public ".

I just hope it is not a racial slur. Let us know.

Jerry
 
The US export restrictions on thermal have been reworded recently following industrial comments, so there is hope that non US people may be able to buy better American stuff... whether they are competitively priced or are ever shipped would be the next question.

Peter
 
NDhunter said:
This is an interesting topic, but I wonder what you mean by "the unwashed
North American public ".

I just hope it is not a racial slur. Let us know.

Jerry
Click to expand...

I know we are living in a period of social insanity but how on earth could you possibly make a racial slur out of that?

The 'unwashed North American public' was a lighthearted comic reference to the general population, the hoi polloi, the plebes, and in this case specifically of those who have been deprived of the technology due to its cost and unavailability.

Backgrounder to this, in case anyone doesn't know, highly advanced IR viewers, both 'passive' and 'active,' ie, including an active IR light source invisible to the naked eye, have been used by the western militaries for decades now, and it has now trickled down to general retail, or at least is starting to. I suppose part of my reference to the unwashed public reflects a certain bitterness that the technology has actually been repressed over the years, to keep it out of the hands of the general population and preserve an advantage to government forces. But this is a very non-birding issue.

Maljunulo said:
Canadians are a different race now?
Click to expand...

I don't say we are not superior. :)
 
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So where is the Avro Arrow, its advanced engines and everything that would have followed? :)

I suppose Canada did make binoculars.
 
A group has been using side scanning sonar and such-like things to probe the bottom of Lake Ontario, looking for some of the test Arrows that were launched pilotless and never intended to be recovered. They've found two, last I heard. The need for a supersonic fighter during the Cold War was of course greatly reduced when ballistic missiles became the dominant means of delivering death between the continents but the fact that the government of the day ordered the complete destruction of all the existing models and plans, that was very unfortunate. They of course saw the Arrow as a black hole project that would swallow money with no benefit.
 
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