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Binoculars or Monoculars (1 Viewer)

Joachim

Spooking: Viewing from behind window glass

We're hi-jacking the thread--In my post I expressed no opinion whether or not spooking is a monocular versus binocular issue--, but it's good sometimes in passing to discuss practical birdwatching issues like spooking or viewing through window glass, as well as the more popular comparative optics!

There are two sorts of spooking at feeders.

One is where birds fly off when you look at, or lay binoculars on them.

The other is when a bird that is flying in on course to feed at the feeders sees you, and veers off away from the feeders and out of the garden or into nearby cover.

I experience both sorts of spooking when looking out through my windows, or out in the garden, but in order to keep things short, treat only the first sort in answering your point re window glass as follows:


1. The window glass in my house is post-1953 but pre-float glass. I don't have double-glazing. The garden window of my living room is a large 'picture' window.

2. Last year a courting Goldcrest spent a month attacking the garden window. He seemed to be running a one-man lek! This year a courting Long-tailed tit spent a couple of weeks displaying at the window. Both birds were largely tolerant of my quietly watching and photographing them.

But that is the only time that I can recall when birds not preoccupied with feeding or interacting with other birds have ignored my looking at them through window glass.

On the other hand if I don't look at birds in the garden, but get on with tasks about the house, as I observe when I take a quick glance out of the window, they get on with life in the garden regardless of my presence.

Ie it is being looked at that the birds don't like. Some don't mind it so much if you just look at them quietly with the naked eye. But look at them through an optic, and few will stay long before leaving the garden.

And in the case of my house, window glass makes little difference to that behaviour.

3. That said, you are right to suppose that standing back 8 metres from the window in the shadow of the room should make a difference to the behaviour of the birds.

Standing back does indeed make them less sensitive to my presence.

But the improvement is most likely explained by my thereby removing myself outside their flight distance*.

Thus some birds, even at 8 metres back, do still fly off when I lay the binoculars on them.


Stephen


* I use the term 'flight distance' for the distance when a bird's response to threat changes from flight to close observation and caution. In the presence of food the distance may be expected to reduce from the bird's normal flight distance
 
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Hi Stephen,

thanks for sharing your observations (which are obviously based on many more years of birdwatching than mine). Yes, I have seen birds get off when I looked at them too, but always thought it was due to my movement rather than them noticing being watched.

In the rare case of sth interesting directly in front of my windows (rather than over the river), they are usually completely unconcerned as long as I leave the window closed - which might be due to double glass and the roof overhanging the balcony in front, so the window is in the shade...

Unfortunately we cannot ask them...

Joachim
 
Joachim

You're kind!

I'm not experienced, but spend a lot of time watching and photographing ordinary little garden birds in my garden. It's indeed often mystifying what's going on in their minds: Why they come one day, and don't come the next. Even the answers to more simple questions, not involving bird psychology, like: 'Am I viewing the same Goldfinches, or is it a succession of families from the New Town Centre flock?' to date defy me.

In the case of the reaction of the birds in my garden to being looked at, it has to be a guess, but like Wood pigeons have a flight distance of 100 metres or more in the countryside, and sometimes 5 metres or less in town, I think the reason is a different association of a human being looking at them, or pointing something in their direction. From the look of some of the people on the street in my block of Stevenage New Town, I fancifully suspect that the association is airgunners firing at little birds in their gardens (Council-owned properties in the block have high panel garden fences, so that the neighbours are not going to complain about stray pellets).

Certainly in complete contrast, away from the gardens, alongside one of the Stevenage cycle tracks a new sight this last year was a Buzzard with the flight distance of an urban Crow*: It was sitting on a 3 metre high lamp post about 5 metres away from me. I pointed the Buzzard out to a passing pedestrian; it just sat there calmly while we talked, and was still there when I continued on my journey.

As you say, it's unfortunate we cannot ask them!


Stephen


* In the country also earlier this year, a Buzzard did even better. It was sitting on a low post at our level 2 or 3 metres to the side of a private road as a friend and I cycled slowly past; thought lazily about flying off; but by then we had passed it by; so it didn't bother. Totally Crow-like!
 
Crows here move when I get within 2 metres.
Pigeons don't move at 30cms.
Foxes don't care at 2 metres in the middle of the day.

Two foxes were pulling at a dead cat in the back garden in the evening, but I don't think they killed it.
A lady lost 3 of her 4 cats to road traffic.

Magpies are more nervous.
Blackbirds fairly tolerant as are robins.
 
Etudiant

1. I'm most sorry to have neglected your useful suggestions and question.

2. Anti-Spooking measures

As to photography, I did try sitting in the garden in a construction worker's poncho--a sort of mobile hide--but it got stuffy, and made it difficult to handle a camera. I certainly intend one day to put in a long session, and compare the yield of good photos with a similar session dressed normally.

So I take my time, and remain as far as possible immobile, and sometimes sufficient birds eventually get used to me for me to get a couple of good photo-opportunities.

That's photography.

I am less patient when I just use binoculars, but the technique does work reasonably well, so long as I don't look at the birds for too long at a time.

3. Skittishness of birds in UK

It's not possible for me to generalise.

I notice that some other people, by contrast with me, locate their feeders close to the house, and even so the birds largely ignore them as they watch through the window. But at such a near distance, they don't use binoculars. And the object of feeding birds is usually not birdwatching but viewing the cheerful sight of bird acitivity.

People are beginning to treat as a truism--or complain--in Britain that the protection of birds and animals causes their number to rise. A Carp fisherman complained to me the other day that Otter are the new Mink. Farmers complain to the newspapers that Badger numbers are rising to pest levels.

In the bird world protection (or protection following reintroduction) has certainly caused the number of say Buzzards and Red kites to rise to such an extent that they are now in many parts of England numbered among the common 'background' species. Protection where effective does seem to lend a species also at the same time an increased confidence in the presence of man.

But the skittishness of small birds in my part of the world has I think, rather more to do with high density, leading to aggression not just within species, but between species, than any lack of protection against man. Add Cats everywhere, Sparrowhawks overhead, and the Human airgunner as still a menace, albeit a minor one, and small birds have ample reason to be skittish!

A high density is to be expected because Stevenage New Town where I live is a light-industrial town that was built from scratch after the war. It is highly planned, to a high standard, in particular a low housing density . It has, I believe, the highest proportion of woodland and parkland within its bounds of any town of its size in England.

Most houses also, as a result of the low housing density, have small gardens. I think though that the average size is greater than the size of my garden.

Without need of protection, the proximity of woodland and parkland to houses mostly with gardens (and I imagine many with feeders!), as a matter of the supply of breeding territories, and the supplement of natural food supplies, does make for a good population of woodland birds, as well as the species that are adapted to living alongside man.

That's as far as I can go to answer you.


Stephen
 
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I am considering getting him his own binoculars, or a monocular. This is something that we would both end up using, or sharing.

First off, is a monocular really worth it? Do you really get better power for less money?

Go sit outside looking at nature around you, and try out how much you enjoy looking with one eye closed. I'm betting, not so much.
 
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