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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alexjh1" data-source="post: 3510332" data-attributes="member: 85555">Well that describes me, and there are several reasons for it, but most notably that scopes are expensive bits of kit to buy, and particularly as someone who likes to travel light (as often going by public transport or on a bike which for various reasons I don't like the idea of having conspicuous expensive equipment) it's a major investment I currently don't feel comfortable making.  There are certainly times when I'm very grateful for a person there at the same time offering me a look through their scope giving me a better look at some distant bird or other, and it very much is a different experience watching through a scope than through binoculars and camera, but it's certainly not a fundamental necessity to go birding. Probably 99.9% of birds I encounter can be viewed enough through binoculars or my bridge camera for me to confidently ID in the field, but the obvious flip side of that is that I have records of birds I only got brief views of or for whatever reason I wasn't able to look at properly I have a record of that someone can look at if necessarily that without the camera would have to be "written off".</blockquote>