So, I was tidying up my office and came across some of these pix from days gone by. Have a laugh on me!
Are those really bell-bottoms???? I am sporting my first pair of binoculars, a whopping, neck-breaking pair of Helios 7×50 Binoculars..the best gift ever given to me by my parents. The other “best gift” they gave me was in 1985 when my mum told me they wouldn’t let me go to Scilly since I had my “A” levels coming up (the following June!!!). Of course, that was one of the most memorable years on Scilly. Thanks Mum!!
They opened up a world of free entertainment for me. I used them for more than 11 years, whereby the sheer physical daily abuse they were given rendered them battered and beaten.
Eleven years on, many rare british birds later and the bins are now worn, but have gone transatlantic! They are held up by a guitar strap to replace the razor-blade like strap that was forming a groove in my neck!. First trip to the US, we had just lucked into the first Crane Hawk for the US and had just found a Clay-colored Robin in the tree above where this shot was taken!
The same fall, I headed out for my first sojourn to Cape May, New Jersey with Paul Holt and Richard Crossley, the first year of nine spectacular summers and falls here.
What’s with the Kim Kardashian sunglasses!!!?? How the hell did we identify warblers in flight with bins like that??
And finally, a moment of silence for a pair of bins that have served me well. Faced with owning a pair of Zeiss Dialyt’s as reward for participating in what was one of the first surveys to document the “morning flight” spectacle at Higbee’s Beach, I had no option but to retire my trusted bins.
I had worn out the metal slots to which the guitar strap attached and resorted for somereason, to using a hankerchief as a strap..don’t ask me why! I couldn’t bear to part with them, so I kept them like some dead lover, hidden away in the glove compartment of my car. At this point, I was getting headaches trying to look through them and eventually gave them a viking burial and despatched them on their way. Farewell my beloved!