2000 Birder Beanie

Mark has had an interest in birds since the middle 1970’s and has derived much pleasure from watching the birds that come to his backyard feeders.  But he has always had difficulty identifying birds in the wild since he is physically unable to handle a pair of binoculars.

He has spent years trying to design a device that would enable him to get a better look at the birds.  He tried mounting a spotting scope on his wheelchair which worked okay for a few stationary birds but was useless in finding flitting warblers and vireos in the treetops.  He tried strapping a monocular to his right hand, and with the limited use of his biceps and shoulder he could draw his hand up to his eye and with great effort he could sometimes find a bird, but more often than not he found himself studying the intricate patterns of the stationary wildflowers nearby.

In 1995 Mark moved near the Turkey Creek Streamway Park, a secluded woodland just minutes by wheelchair from his house and accessible by an asphalt path.  At that point he was determined to find a way to identify those elusive migratory song birds.

What he has done is this.  He has used Velcro and a leather cord to attach a lightweight pair of sport binoculars to the bill of a ball cap (Baltimore Orioles, no less).  With this design he now has, from one position, the full range of view from as far as he can turn his head from left to right and up and down.  And of course, he can re-position his chair for a whole new range of view.  This design has solved nearly all of his problems.

This is how they work.  He first keeps the ball cap cocked back on his head and the binoculars resting on his forehead.  Then, once he spots a bird with his naked eye, he reaches up behind his head, and without moving his eyes or losing sight of the bird, he nudges the back of the ball cap up which causes the weight of the binoculars to pull the binoculars down in front of his eyes and brings the bird into view.

"You cannot imagine the thrill I got when I saw my first yellow warbler sitting in the radiant sunshine in full 8X magnification," Mark says.

He had grown so accustomed to being unsure of which species of bird he was seeing that he just assumed all birders came away from spotting a bird with a lingering doubt as to what exactly they had just seen.  But when he saw those deep red, irregular stripes on that brilliant yellow breast there was no mistake, it was exactly the same as the photo in his field guide.  He was astounded.

Then, suddenly a Tennessee warbler came into view, and just a few branches up from it was a chipping sparrow and, in addition to that, seconds later within the same field of view came a solitary vireo that gave him a split second, full-faced glimpse of those distinctive white spectacles around the eyes before he flew away.  These four were all life-list birds for Mark.

Mark has since come to realize that this was something of an unrealistic introduction to the world of birding, but it was a thrilling one nonetheless.

"Oh sure, a good many birds elude me that an able-bodied birder would have gotten, but I am elated just to be able to enjoy the sport of birding," Mark says.