Two days ago I made my trek over to Superior, and saw not one, or two but three Snowy Owls. However, although the Snowys are definitely “vole snatchers”, the real fun was watching this Red Fox hunt the airport grounds. I think the fox understood how fences work. Red understood it was on one side of the fence, and I was on the other side. It walked to within 25 yards of me which was totally unexpected and amazing. The sun came out briefly for the fox, and then the clouds rolled back in.
I finally bought a Thermal Monocular for Birding, which was a BIG purchase for me … spending $900 US. My monocular is supposed to arrive today. I will update this post with links to subsequent posts giving my impressions of the technology as I move from novice to expert (?) with the monocular.
This purchase was extremely unusual for me. For camera equipment I do NOT own costly expensive long lenses. My purchase was a Rix Pocket K3 with a native resolution of 384 x 288 thermal sensor. This resolution is one step up from the more basic 256 x 192 thermal sensors. Please note this monocular tends to often be out of stock … Amazon link.
Updates to my Rix Pocket K3 Thermal Monocular Review will posted immediately below:
This post is the first post in this series (02/08/2026)
Second Post – Thermal Monocular Birding Review (02/19/2026):
As always I bought my thermal with my own money, received zero discounts from manufacturers because of this blog, nor do I have any sponsored links.
I think most everyone knows that YouTube is a great spot to go birding. Trying different searches within YouTube itself can yield amazing results … not just searching directly from Google. My other birding search engine is queries made from within Reddit. I look for interesting discussions on birding topics. This is how I actually found the channel, “Of Human and Nature” this morning. I watched this gentleman’s out of Germany excellent field documented birding expedition where he was trying out a new thermal monocular (video link).
However, the real reason I wanted to create this post was to remind / inform everyone that even though the date is early in February, we are now starting the time of “bird nestcams”. Here are two of my favorites …
Eagle NestCam on Captiva Island in southern Florida. Remember, the best action for this camera will be early morning after sunrise, and the camera is located in the Eastern Time Zone of the USA. NestCam Direct Link for blog email subscribers).
Great Horned Owl NestCam in southern Minnesota. Remember, the best action will for this camera will be in the early hours after sunset, and this camera is located in the Central Time Zone of the USA. There is seem to be some “rollout technical issues” for this camera, but it is 100% worth visiting this YouTube link and exploring Stan Tekiela’s channel, Nature Live.
I would be remiss if I did not add links to my own YouTube channels. While I don’t promote these channels very much, I post many nature videos in YouTube that do not end up included here in a blog post.
Now a flashback … longer time subscribers will remember when three years ago I built fuzzball (Great Horned Owlet) a quick lawn chair nesting platform (see the blog post)! The nest from which this owlet had fallen was extremely high in a white pine, and even my friend who is a retired Duluth Fire Captain told me the real nest was too high to be safely reached. The “packing tarp” was to insure neither Mom GHO’s or Fuzzballs would get caught in their new nest. Police tape was put up surrounding the pine to protect the youngster as the nest was located just off a hiking trail.
More importantly, Momma GHO said “yes” to my nesting platform and fed Fuzzball for over two weeks before the owlet fledged (YouTube link for blog subscribers … Fuzzball gets fed)
