Toys

We own two toys for tweeting: a monocular with an aperture of about an inch and a binocular with an aperture of about half an inch. The latter was a gift which came with our National Trust membership at some point and usually lives, unused, in the glove compartment of our car.

I usually take the monocular on holiday, but I forgot on our recent trip to Holne and was reduced to the National Trust. Which reminded me that, as far as I was concerned, a small monocular was far better for casual tweeting than a small binocular.

They are roughly the same size and both fit comfortably in a pocket. Both hang, less comfortably but more conveniently, from the neck. Neither is telescopic in the way of some cranes, for example that at reference 2.

My practise is to use them with spectacles off. For me, this seems to work better, whatever it might say on the instructions. Noting in passing that my left eye is much worse than my right eye and I use my right eye for the monocular.

But, even supposing that both have been adjusted for my eyes (or my right eye, as the case may be), the monocular can be brought into useful action a lot faster than the binocular. From a standing start, I seem to have of a lot more trouble achieving binocular vision with the binoculars than achieving monocular vision with the monocular. To the point where the tweet is mainly missed. And using the right barrel of the binocular as a monocular was not that much better, in fact rather awkward.

Maybe sailors such as Hardy had a point when they used spyglasses - and built monuments to same. See the end of reference 1 on this last point.

With the lesson being to pack more carefully on future occasions.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/poundbury.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/crane.html. Still there last night.