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Burgess binoculars



Well, so many of you responded to my post about Burgess binoculars that
Bill has sold out, but he expects more sometime in mid-Dec. He reports that
as a result of my post to this group, he sold about 100 binoculars to you
all and his email was full to overflowing and his phone rang incessantly
for a couple days. I thought that there'd be interest in these, but had no
idea there'd be that many of you who wanted them immediately. ;-)

So many of you have asked me privately about these, that I thought I'd post
a few brief specs:

The rubber armored 7.5x32 weigh about 23oz. including rainguard, (eyepiece
cover) and captive objective caps. They're approximately 5" wide x 6" long
(with eyecups screwed all the way out). A guesstimation of the eyerelief is
a whopping 22mm. It's loooooonng. This means that they do tend to blackout
easily if not centered on the eye, but it also means that they can be used
with glasses or sunglasses. The are waterproof, feature BAK4 prisms, and
are broadband coated for true color renditions. The strap lugs are very
badly placed; right in the middle of the underside of the barrels, but most
folks can probably grip these in a way that gets around that nuisance.

The 8x42s are longer and heavier, but I don't know by how much. (I seem to
remember that they struck me as being just a bit longer than the Pentax,
but don't know for sure.)

The website: BurgessOptical.com  still shows the regular price, and is
pretty sparse with info about these, but several of you report that talking
with Bill on the phone has been most informative. He mentioned in an email
that he's also hoping to come out with a high quality, low cost 90mm
spotter sometime in the future. Finally, it looks like he liked my idea of
calling the small roof prism binoculars "Merlins", but it's unknown whether
this next batch of them will have either the Burgess name or that model
anywhere on them. If they live up to the quality of the prototypes, they
may well take the birding world by storm. 

Again, I have no connection with this company, I just thought I'd pass on
my impressions of a good product at a reasonable price. 

Back to birding.... I saw two red-cockaded woodpeckers and dozens of rusty
blackbirds at Mason Farm today. For those of you that enjoy Mason Farm, be
sure to check out the trail that starts off to the right before the gate.
It parallels the stream for about 1/2 the length of the dirt drive, and is
a good spot for kinglets, various sparrows, juncos, phoebes, towhees,
flycatchers and woodpeckers, etc.

Mike Swaim
Western Orange Co. NC