Carmen noticed some interesting raptors perched on our back fence and asked me where my binoculars were. I have a pair of nice Celestron 7×50 binos that I use for astronomy, but I also have a nice tripod mounted set of WWII 10×50 spotting binoculars. We spied on the bird for a while, and I got the idea of snapping some pictures with my super cheap digicam. Since the camera is fixed focus at infinity, you can just put it up to the eyepiece and click. Here is the resulting picture (kind of dark, as it was late in the day).
There are tons of dust specks in the image. This is because the image plane is
very close to one of the surfaces of the eyepieces, so the dust on that surface
is in sharp focus. I really need to break this apart and clean them someday
when I am feeling brave.
I think this guy is probably an American Kestrel:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i3600id.html
It had brown and white stripes on it’s neck. Check it out & see if you agree.