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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Troubador" data-source="post: 3260875" data-attributes="member: 109211">Hi JoshI have to agree with you on this, but with one observation. There are different kinds of birding. One is the kind to which you refer and which revolves around identification of species. It used to be called bird spotting over here. Often it also involves lists of species seen, by year, location, life etc.Another kind of birding that used to be called bird watching requires the identification of birds using bins only, probably stalking to get close, and then the observation of patterns of behaviour over a period of time. Birds too far away to be identified are just that: too far away. The goal of this type of birding is an understanding of behaviour rather than the accumulation of lists of species seen.These two types of birding are, of course, not necessarily mutually exclusive, nor is one any 'better' than the other, but serve to show that birding (and other kinds of nature observation) doesn't have to revolve around bins/scope and tripod.Lee</blockquote>