{"id":820,"date":"2008-04-17T03:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-17T03:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=820"},"modified":"2014-10-01T03:47:37","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T03:47:37","slug":"first-looks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=820","title":{"rendered":"First looks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/bins.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190035396200938338\" style=\"FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/bins.gif\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span style=\"font-size:85%;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawkowlsnest.com\/2008\/04\/my-first-pair-of-binoculars.html\">Patrick<\/a> invited us to share a bit about the first pair of binoculars that we used for birding. Unlike Patrick, I came to birding kinda late in life, when I was in my mid-twenties, and bought a pair of Kowa&#8217;s at the nature center where I would end up volunteering a few weeks later.<\/p>\n<p>They were cheap and pretty awful, but nothing as bad as what I see some people trying to learn birds with. I used them for a couple years until I was able to appreciate the difference between a $100 pair of binoculars and a $1000 pair of binoculars. I saved up for the Zeiss 7X42&#8217;s I use now and still keep those old Kowa&#8217;s on the counter to grab when I see something interesting out the kitchen window. They&#8217;re always dusty, but I still see nice birds with them once in a while.<\/p>\n<p>Now I&#8217;m trying to remember what my first bird was with the new Zeiss&#8217;&#8230; I think it may have been a prothonotary on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=828\">first day of the spring weekend<\/a> in Cape May in 98 or 99. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Patrick invited us to share a bit about the first pair of binoculars that we used for birding. Unlike Patrick, I came to birding kinda late in life, when I was in my mid-twenties, and bought a pair of Kowa&#8217;s at the nature center where I would end up volunteering a few weeks later. They &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=820\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">First looks<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}