On Monday morning, I scoped my 200th species in Ohio, the Eurasian Wigeon. This pretty duck was of course buried within a flotilla of Ring-necks, Mallards, Pintails, Canada Geese, and American Wigeons. He kept ducking behind other birds and diving, and was quite difficult to track for all of us birders there trying to tick him off our lists. But I finally did see him cross my field-of-view a few times. A pretty bird, rusty red head with cream line down the middle, a rosy-colored breast, he mixes in well with Redhead, but is a light gray overall with a white wing patch. This was at the Congress Road bridge over the Mogadore Reservoir, NE Ohio. Photo below by Joe Kollar from eBird:

Monday was also the first time that I used my spotting scope in the field. There was some good news and some bad news associated with it. The good, great, news is the performance of the Vortex Viper HD spotting scope: excellent field-of-view; clear, bright and crisp display; focus and zooming actions both very responsive and easy to operate… everything’s intuitive. The scope even comes with a case, which is kind of cheap and I don’t run with it, after all it’s waterproof right? This scope performs admirably when compared to my former scope, the Zeiss Victory Harpia 95.

The bad was the tripod. I just simply overbought, especially with the Manfrotto 502AH video head; it’s simply too heavy for me, and rather difficult to figure out and operate. Everything is too big on it, and I really didn’t like it. Also the legs – the Manfrotto MT055CXPRO3 carbon fiber tripod – is a bit too unwieldy to use in the field and also a bit too heavy to be lugging around. Overall tripod/head weight comes in at 8 lbs… plus the scope, that’s 12.8 lbs total. And I did research the hell out of this, but tripods are so difficult to figure out, especially as there are so many tripod models and separate panning heads to choose from. But at the end of Monday, I knew they had to go and I had to lighten my load.

So back to the webs and looking around, reading specs and reviews all over again. Interestingly, Manfrotto makes a backpacker carbon fiber tripod, which I checked out and also spoke with a B&H salesman about. Why didn’t I see this in my first search?? It’s called the Manfrotto Befree GT Travel Carbon Fiber tripod, and is sold only as a set with a different type of head. Its general weight with attached ballhead is 3.40 lbs., and it extends fully to 63.8″, perfect for me. Because of the packaging combos, I had to purchase a separate head, the Manfrotto Befree Live Videohead, for tilt/pan activities. It’s got an 8.8 lb. load capacity and weighs only .8 lbs. The tripod/panhead combo should weigh the same at 3.4 lbs., likely lower since the ballhead should weight more. So that’s a total combined weight of 8.2 lbs., and I am expecting it to come in under that, again depending on what the ballhead actually weighs. That’s a total weight reduction of over 4 lbs.! I went ahead and ordered the tripod and the panhead, and I should have them tomorrow, to take into the field on Friday.