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Message: <blockquote data-quote="brocknroller" data-source="post: 1862374" data-attributes="member: 665">jacquot,Good man! You are a much more dedicated birdwatcher than I am. The most I've done is participate in Project Feeder Watch for the Cornell Lab, which is a summer program. The results were complied in a book (anonymously). I also reported a Cornell tagged crow in my backyard. But that's about as involved I've gotten with professional ornithologists. OTOH, I used to be a dedicated amateur astronomer. Out late at night at some remote, dark site, shoveling snow to make level ground for our telescopes (and occasionally, pushing club members' cars out of the snow). Doing Messier Marathons from dusk to dawn, and up all night during meteor showers (the Leonid Meteor Storm was a blast!)When I was in Jr. High, I participated in a worldwide project that tracked when the umbra of the earth's shadow "touched" certain craters on the moon, using atomic time signals from CHU Canada. I think the purpose was to obtain a more accurate scale of the moon for the upcoming Apollo Space Program. I manned the scope and had a button that I pushed that lit a light in my friend's bedroom where he was listening to the radio, and he would record the time. Our names and our results were published in Sky & Telescope magazine. That was my 15 minutes of fame. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />I was a JPL Solar System Ambassador and gave talks about NASA space probe missions. I also taught college courses on human space exploration for four years. So I was really "into it". However, after decades of winter dark site stargazing we began experiencing an increasing number of cloudy nights in my area (one year, we beat Seattle for the record). Encroaching light pollution also drove us farther and farther away from home, so I eventually decided to turn my optics earthward and observe birds and wildlife. However, I never became as avid a birdwatcher or wildlife observer as I was an amateur astronomer/space enthusiast. I do it for recreation and because I like to play with different binoculars. For your "job", you need the right tool, and it sounds like the Ultravid is it.</blockquote>

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