It may be a good idea to rent/borrow a scope from the reserve a couple of times, and find out whether the downsides of extra weight and bulk outweigh (literally) the advantages that a scope gives you. I fully understand both the desire to see birds further/in more detail and to rush out and buy neat kit, but sometimes you can be more effective being light and unencumbered - this is especially so if you are by yourself rather than one of two. Once you're fully familiar with your binoculars, you can see and identify a lot within the range of 10x or even 8x binos; and certain aspects of behaviour are better viewed through binoculars. If for instance you're there in late spring through early autumn and a hobby suddenly shows up and starts hunting sand martins your scope will be next to useless, ditto if a peregrine appears after waders/wildfowl/starlings.
There's no doubt that scopes can be helpful - sometimes the brute magnification really does help. But with such a large purchase (in every sense) I think there is much to recommend becoming fully familiar with what you can do, and how satisfying the birding experience is, with and without it before splashing the cash.
There's no doubt that scopes can be helpful - sometimes the brute magnification really does help. But with such a large purchase (in every sense) I think there is much to recommend becoming fully familiar with what you can do, and how satisfying the birding experience is, with and without it before splashing the cash.
