Hi Ian, no problem whatsoever.
The monitoring sounds great - my partners family live in Bavaria, and I've been fortunate to visit them a few times. Goshawk is fairly common in the forest nearby, and one spring afternoon I remember I had a male Hen harrier drift over - wonderful to see. I want to go back in the winter at some stage, as I was fortunate to hear a calling Pygmy owl early one morning - not so easy to see in the spring though!
I'm afraid I may not be best placed to comment much further, as I have not viewed through either of the Meopta or Nikon scopes, however their relative merits have been discussed previously;
Nikon
I recently spent a pleasant few hours evaluating a scope that exceeded my expectations in nearly every way. The Nikon Monarch 82ED has been around for over 2 years now, but it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression in the market or been much reviewed or discussed in optics forums. A...
www.birdforum.net
Meopta
I have been thinking long time of upgrading my Nikon ED50, because in migration watch and in some birdtowers it's undergunned. So I almost bought 80mm Swarovski from ebay auction, thought about buying Monarch scope and also thought biting the bullet and paying 3000€ for the Kowa 883 + tripod and...
www.birdforum.net
I'm considering to buy Meopta S2 82 HD probably with 30-60x WA eyepiece. I would be interested to know if the focus ring becomes smoother over time, because many have stated that it is rather stiff (at least when new)? It's also quite fast and it may be an issue for me because I can remember how...
www.birdforum.net
In 2016 I reviewed Meopta’s S2 Angled, paired with its 30-60 WA wide-angled eyepiece and was so impressed by it that I made a note to revisit this model along with the alternative 20-70x eyepiece at a later date. My opening remarks in the previous review introduced Meopta for the benefit of...
www.birdforum.net
Apologies if you have already read these during your research. Both scopes seem to be very highly regarded, though perhaps the Meopta is used by more people, possibly accounting for more threads on that particular scope. Both scopes offer WA zoom options, which also seem to be recommended. The Meopta has the option of the 20-70x zoom, which perhaps gives more versatility due to the lower power (useful for scanning larger areas) and the additional bit of magnification at the top end.
The standard bit of advice I'd give would be to test them and pick the one that works best for you, but probably not possible/a great idea at present.
I'm unsure of your budget, but the obvious recommendation to consider would be a Swarovski ATX 85, which would gather a bit more light than either scope whilst not being totally unwieldy, with the bonus of purchasing the 1.7x adapter at a later stage if you need a bit more power.
Hopefully somebody who has used the scopes can chip in with a more useful bit of advice, but don't forget that you will also need a good quality tripod to make the most of your scope!
