Everything You Need to Start Birding, According to ‘Extraordinary Birder’ Host Christian Cooper

Christian Cooper wants you to know that you could go birding right now—this very moment—no matter who you are, where you are, or what stuff you do or don’t own.

“The most important thing—and really the only thing—you must have as a birder is yourself and your awareness,” says Cooper. “You don’t even have to step outside your front door; you can do it from a window. You don’t even need, say, eyesight, because there are people who bird blind using their ears.”

Cooper’s big-hearted zeal for birding makes him a natural fit to host National Geographic Wild’s new docuseries Extraordinary Birder With Christian Cooper (video), which is also available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu. But when it comes to essential birding equipment, he’s more pragmatic and minimalist.

“There are certain tools that you’re going to want to enhance the experience,” he says—although he insists the list is short. Below, Cooper runs us through the must-haves that accompany him on all of his birding expeditions.

As Cooper recounts in his recent memoir-slash-manifesto, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World, he has birded for the past decade with a pair of Swarovski binoculars his father gave him for his 50th birthday. Friends sometimes jokingly ask if they’re bejeweled, since the brand is better known for its eye-catching bling. Perhaps not coincidentally, Cooper says his binoculars’ “crystal-clear clarity” is what he loves most about them.

“You just get a lot of light with these binoculars,” he explains—more than most burgeoning birders would likely even notice, which is just one reason why Cooper advises against starting your birding career by splurging on binoculars that, like his, run well above $2,000. (Wirecutter’s recommended binoculars for birding cost between $100 and $400.)

Relatively affordable with great optics, these binoculars have comparable performance to many models that cost thousands more. They’re easy to use and durable as well.

More important than price, Cooper says, is the magnification and lens size, which determine how big of an image you get. A magnification between 7x and 10x is ideal. (His binoculars, for example, have a magnification of 8.5x and a lens size of 42mm.) More than that, he explains, and “you lose your field of vision. It’s going to be harder to keep the bird in frame or to find the bird at all.”

Another reason Cooper insists you don’t need to spend a lot on binoculars is because he hasn’t spent anything on binoculars, ever. “I have never bought a pair of binoculars in my entire life. All of mine have been hand-me-downs or gifts,” he says. Many birders tend to upgrade their binoculars as they gain more experience, he notes, which means they often give away their old ones. (That’s how one of his fellow Central Park enthusiasts, who lives in the park, received her first pair from another birder.)

In Cooper’s experience, any binoculars designed for outdoor use last a long time. Should they sustain damage, though, he says that Swarovski’s “really great service plan” has been a boon to his birding pursuits: “Mine got knocked over once in a windstorm. I sent them to the company and they fixed them and sent them right back, and I don’t think they even charged me for it.”

Cooper used to carry a small notebook to record his sightings and other details relevant to migratory patterns (place, date, time, weather conditions, wind conditions from the previous night, phase of the moon). These days, of course, an app can do all of that. Actually, Cooper relies on three for different tasks.

The free eBird app (Android, iOS), from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology—or, as Cooper calls the institution, “the gods of birding”—employs a crowdsourced, citizen science model that allows people to look up which birds other folks have spotted and logged nearby (as recently as in the past hour) while also maintaining their own bird-sighting lists, just as Cooper used to do on paper.

It provides opportunities for novice birders to build and hone their skills, Cooper says, but it also actively works to weed out questionable sightings. “They will rate your ability as a birder to judge how accurate your sightings really are,” he explains, “and if you upload something really out of left field, they’ll question you on it.”

While eBird is great for finding out which birds are nearby based on recent sightings, Cooper suggests Merlin Bird ID (Android, iOS), another free app from the Cornell lab, when you’re looking at a bird you don’t recognize—or even if you hear a bird, thanks to the app’s ability to identify bird sounds as well.

“[Merlin Bird ID is] incredible, and it keeps getting better and better every year because the AI behind it keeps learning,” Cooper says. In fact, he concedes that he has a love-hate relationship with Merlin Bird ID, “because it makes people like me, who have spent a lifetime acquiring this knowledge, obsolete.”

Cooper serves on the board of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and The New York Times recently partnered with them in their citizen science endeavors. However, Cooper stresses, “You can ask any birder, and they will tell you that these two apps are it.” Wirecutter has previously recommended both of them in our article on bird photography.

Even with all his years of birding experience, Cooper likes to keep Sibley Birds, an old-school field guide app, on his phone. “I just find it tremendously valuable for looking up information in a quick snap,” he says. “I use it all the time.”

The Sibley Birds 2nd Edition app (Android, iOS) can be accessed offline, which proves helpful when birding in remote locales. And although the app is based on the paper books authored by renowned ornithologist David Allen Sibley, Cooper likes that it has more functionality than the average ebook.

“When I’m in the field and [I think], ‘Ah, that plumage doesn’t look quite right, what’s the plumage of this bird in an immature female,’ I can look that up,” he says. “Or you can search dialects of birds … because yes, birds have dialects.”

Sun protection: Because hat brims can impede his field of vision, Cooper usually opts for baseball caps, which can be turned bill-backwards as needed, to shield himself from UV rays rather than sun hats. (Of course, don’t forget the sunscreen.)

Tick protection: Cooper endorses the usual best practices to ward off ticks. Wear a lightweight, long-sleeve shirt, tuck your pants into your socks, and beforehand, treat your socks and shoes (and maybe even your pants, if you’ll be among tall grasses or dense woods) with a permethrin repellent—with no cats around, notes senior staff writer Doug Mahoney, because permethrin is “super toxic” to cats when it’s wet.

Repellents that contain DEET should be kept away from your binoculars, as the chemical has been shown to harm plastics, which is what the casing of many binoculars are made from.

Instead, look for sprays with a 20% concentration of plastic-safe picaridin, such as two of our bug repellent picks, the Sawyer Products 20% Picaridin Insect Repellent or the Ranger Ready Picaridin 20% Tick + Insect Repellent.

A fully charged smartphone: “Don’t be that person whose smartphone runs out of juice while you’re out in the field,” Cooper says. Plugging in his phone before bed is a sacred nightly ritual, but for a second line of defense, we recommend the Zendure SuperMini 20W portable charger.

A camera (if you want): Cooper doesn’t take photographs when birding, although his cohort of birding buddies includes some photographers (and in his experience, many of the new birders who took up the hobby during the pandemic did so with cameras rather than binoculars). “I prefer to be in the moment and just experience the bird, as opposed to being concerned about whether or not I get a good shot,” he says. But if you want to give bird photography a shot (pun intended), we recommend the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ300 for its superior image quality with just enough zoom.

This article was edited by Alexander Aciman and Annemarie Conte.

Rose Maura Lorre

Rose Maura Lorre is a senior staff writer on the discovery team at Wirecutter. Her byline has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Salon, Business Insider, HGTV Magazine, and many more. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, her daughter, one dog, two cats, and lots and lots of houseplants.

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