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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KorHaan" data-source="post: 1624004" data-attributes="member: 49910">Well,Carrying the 18x50's last weekend on a well known birders site let me experience a social aspect; other birders carrying scopes+tripods ignored me. In my scopecarrying days I'd be frequently asked " Anything interesting about? ", but seemingly the lack of true twitchers' gear automatically ranks me as a common birder now, in their eyes. Not that I care much. I politely ask whether there's good birds around as I did before. The answers are shorter, I noticed, even blunt sometimes. Now I've never been much of a twitcher anyway, and I've never become part of the incrowd, but still it strikes me as odd that scope people don't talk to bins people.The Long-Billed Dowitcher was still there, showing magnificently while foraging; my second record only, reasonably close this time. Since I was being ignored I could find it all by myself, that was a joyful experience. And much more rewarding than being told where the bird is, even before you've started looking for it.Later in the afternoon I climbed the three story hide that is newly established overlooking the marshlands; a small party of birders some distance away looking through scopes muttered excited phrases so I asked in a most polite way what they were looking at. " Red-Breasted Goose " was the downright blunt answer. OK, I started looking more closely among the thousands of Barnacle Geese, elbows leaning comfortably on the ledge and IS engaged. Apparently the RBG did not show because I could hear the scopies giving each other clues like " It's in a small ditch now", "You can only see its head", "I lost it" and "It's behind a small growth of grass, oops, now it's gone again".I kept looking patiently, and hey, there it was! Walking in front of the Barnacles, quite some distance away, but I could see it clearly through my 18x50's.On the way back to the parking lot I managed to ID a Goshawk in a tree almost half a kilometer away. Unfortunately the White-Tailed Eagles did not show but from the vantage point of the hide I had been able to locate their nest, a huge platform hidden half in the trees. Even the mast with the webcam on top I could see clearly, several meters from the nest it stood out from the trees.Next spring I'll know where to look for the eagles.Ronald</blockquote>

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