Owlscoping 101
My granddaughter Stasia is with us this week, and, happily enough, the sun was out, the day was close to warm—or, at least, warm enough to shed the parkas—and she was anxious to see the Great Horned Owlets across the street. While she's OK with binoculars, I thought I'd bring my ancient spotting scope to see if she could master looking through it, focusing, and zooming for a much better look at the no-longer-white fuzzballs. I set up the tripod to the right height and held my breath as she looked towards the two birds. Scoping can be hard at first, but my acolyte took to it immediately. With her eye on the 18 to 36X zoom lens, she was quickly smiling and shrieking excitedly in the lingua franca of eight-year-olds everywhere. "OMG," she cried. "O... M... G..."