So I’ve been wanting to get into birding for quite a bit, I love taking note of local species I see on iNaturalist, and the place where I am soon going to move will have a ton of interesting new birds and great hiking locations. Issue is, I’m functionally blind in my left eye due to a weird permanent nerve thing. The vision in my right eye is fine, I wear glasses, it doesn’t really effect my daily life too much, except for birding. Since I functionally only have one eye, binoculars don’t work at all. Which hinders birding a LOT. One of my higher ups at my job took us birding at a local nature reserve, and would point out far away birds’ body shapes and colors, even without binoculars. I was pretty confused, since I essentially just saw a vaguely bird shaped speck, and struggled with identification (which is the most fun part for me, I even got a nice field guide I’ve been itching to use) Does anyone know if there’s some kind of alternative to use for binoculars that are good for birders? Like a one eyed binocular. I plan to go into a pretty wildlife heavy field, so this would probably be a useful thing to literally and figuratively have in my back pocket. Any help is greatly appreciated!
You could buy a monocular, which is basically a tiny telescope / one-eyed binoculars. The magnification tends not to be great in cheap ones but they are easy to carry around in your pocket. Some images: monocular - Google Search
In addition to monoculars, learning to ID by sound can be a great way to bird Here's an article from Audubon by someone who learned to do that: Birding Blind: Open Your Ears to the Amazing World of Bird Sounds | Audubon The organization Birdability Birdability offers a lot of advice for those with any sort of disability. The blog Birding Despite Disability – Obsessions Don't Care About Limitations goes in to some great tools that can help.
Better ask on Birdforum.net, I am certain there are some visually impaired birders there. I heard about a group of birders on wheelchairs, so there could be tips for the visually impaired ones, too.
I am a very avid birder and can say even the most experienced birders identify far more birds by sound than by sight. Most of the birds I encounter I never see but can be IDed easily by their calls.
Almost all serieus birders use a scope on a tripod anyways, which is basically a very strong monocular. So having one eye shouldn’t be a problem at all. I find Xeno Canto a wonderfull site: xeno-canto :: Sharing wildlife sounds from around the world A site that collects bird songs and calls from all over the world.
I am extremely awful at telling sounds apart - one of the reasons I haven't really got into birding! What a neat website, I hadn't heard of it. Thank you for sharing.
Experience is the only way to learn them. I started out bad to, and now I go out birding literally every day and rarely encounter a song or call I don't immediately recognize.
That’s great to know! I can imagine that also adds to the thrill of spotting one you’re only able to hear. Now I have a new skill to obsess over building lol
In many ways I'd say sound ID is actually more important to know that sight ID. You detect far more birds that way. In deep woods habitat in summer, often you can encounter hundreds of birds and not see a single one, but log many species of birds you identified by song.
Sound is definitely a fantastic way to identify birds, unless you have the problem I have where you just cannot seem to remember which bird goes with which call. In which case there are apps that can help you learn those (unless, again, you are a silly goose like me )
