Nothing brings birds up close like a telescope specially designed for birding. An average pair of binoculars magnifies the image that the eye sees, seven or eight times. A birding scope with a zoom lens magnifies that image 20 to 48 times. With a scope, one is able to see and identify birds at a great distance, which otherwise would be impossible. Because it can bring birds in startlingly close, a scope allows the viewer to relish the colors and feathers of a bird in a way not imaginable without it.

On vacation in Maine 16 years ago, I saw an ad in a local Penny Saver for a scope. A woman who lived in a trailer in the woods was selling it. Despite being about 15 years old, the scope was in mint condition. With only the most rudimentary understanding of what one was I bought it for the agreed upon price of $75. Setting it up on a table by the water I focused the lens on a buoy. Looking through the scope I was surprised to see that next to it was a black cormorant, sharp and clear, which wasn't visible to the naked eye. I didn't know it then but I was looking into the future.

During that summer my wife and I drove a roundtrip distance of 64 miles to the outskirts of a small town where we focused the scope on an eagles' nest in a tree above a lake. We saw the eagles there on several occasions, one time being especially memorable. An adult flew in with a fish that it gave to two nestlings. We watched through the telescope as the young birds tore into the fish's silver skin, which soon turned red. Those close up, vivid images, which brought me into the world of birds were as addictive as any powerful drug. I was hooked.

Ten years ago in the spring, I carried the scope many times to a spot on the Greenbelt Trail where I watched a pair of mating red-bellied woodpeckers go in and out of a freshly bored hole. They were taking turns coming and going to feed what I assumed would be nestlings in the tree cavity. Without the scope I never could have seen the birds' subtleties of color and feather texture. I established a comfortable distance or so I thought from the pair. The male tolerated me and I came to know his habits well. As I watched him entering and leaving the nest numerous times, the black and white feathers on his back become scuffed and worn. I came to empathize with the bird that I still think of as Big Red. The female didn't care for my presence and sounded the alarm whenever I was around. Wanting to take pictures of the birds, I sat almost directly beneath the tree very early one morning with my camera. I'm sure the female never would have accepted me there but Big Red came with his progeny and allowed me to take shots that I still have.

In Montauk, I have spent numerous mornings over the course of several summers on a fairly empty area of beach where bank swallows, small 5-inch birds, dig holes in bone-dry cliffs. I've seen them start holes from scratch pecking out the dirt slowly and establishing an entrance, which ultimately was burrowed deep in the cliffs. I've watched them feed insects into the yellow mouths of hungry chicks and swing from what I call "Tarzan" vines that dangled from the cliff tops near those portals. Binoculars alone wouldn't have allowed me to see the impossibly small cliff protrusions on which they stood while starting those holes nor into those hungry mouths. I know the bank swallows of Montauk better than any other bird because the scope brought me to the bank swallows' doors and allowed me to watch their daily activities. Many of the things that I treasure about birding, temporary isolation and being in direct contact with the mystery and beauty of birds have been made possible by that scope.

My wife, who loves being outdoors, has come to enjoy birds more than she ever would have because the scope has brought birds in larger than life. She encouraged me when I initially voiced my concerns about throwing money away in buying it. She also has generously offered strangers a view through the scope over the years. I've watched the startled reactions of a parade of people, most of whom have never seen a bird's image so close, gasp in surprise. At the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, a man in a car seeing me with it pulled off the road. Where could he get one he asked? His interest was in birds of a different feather, the rockets on their launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center, which is adjacent to the refuge.

Three years ago one November morning at 5:30 a.m. I was looking through the scope at a not-often-seen alignment of the moon's thin crescent, Venus and Jupiter. I had recently bought a new, more powerful and expensive scope; however, the tiny but bright images of three of Jupiter's moons were anything but clear in it. In the old scope they were almost as clear as the cormorant had been when I first looked through it many years before. Soon a newspaper deliveryman drove up and asked what I was doing. It was, after all, pitch black. When I told him, perhaps thinking he'd found an astronomer, he turned around and pointed to a bright object in the sky wanting to know what it was. I laughed and pleaded ignorance. I should have offered him a look at the heavens; who knows, he might have gotten hooked on the stars.