What Spotter scope should i get?

[Carl]

Hi all

First of i didn`t know where to post this, but i saw it said Equimment discussion so i thought i`d post it here.

I want to do some wildlife/bird watching and i`m thiniing of buying a SPotter scope so i do wildlife watching and a bit of astronomy.

And anyway i`m new to wildlife/birdwatching and so i don`t know what spotter scop would be good.

I can spend bout £100-£125 cause i want to buy some acceories with it.

Can someone please recommend one please.

cheers

Carl

P.S I want a angled one as i`ll be watching them in there nests.

[Brass n glass]

The Kowa 50mm TS500 series is £129 with a 20X eyepiece from Ace Optical in Bath. Small, light, versatile and a very good brand. The Chinese Acuter scopes, which I believe come from the same place as Skywatcher astro scopes, are cheaper but questions have been raised about eyepiece quality. Unlike astro scopes, spotters don't have universal eyepiece fittings, and eyepieces are often their weakest point. For example, my Bushnell Spacemaster has a superb ED objectives, a reasonable 22X eyepiece and a useless 40X one.

[The Warthog]

Some of the more expensive spotter scopes, for instance the Celestron 90 and above, come with interchangeable eps. If your spotter scope is greater than about 15x, you must have a finder scope. I know this because I have a Konus 30-90x spotter scope, and it drives me mad trying to find things in the sky with it. I have seen some Nikon spotter scopes on Ebay that I would like to get some opinions on. They look quite nice, and aren't expensive.

[Rob]

If you can get one with a T2 thread and adapter allows 1.25 ep's to be used!!

[Brass n glass]

But some spotters have very short focuser travel because they are made to be used with quite a narrow range of mags such as 25X-60X. Sometimes short-focus astro eyepieces can't get close enough to the objective. Some also have internal lenses as well as erect-image prisms, and don't like Barlows being used with astro eyepieces.