The Brookline Bird Club would like to thank Vortex and Zeiss Optics for repairing or replacing donated binoculars in the club’s loaner box at no charge. Vortex offers an unusual unlimited warranty and promptly replaced a pair of damaged Raptor binoculars with a shiny new pair!

Our Zeiss loaner binoculars were a vintage pair marked “Made in West Germany”, and dating to the 70’s or 80’s.  The impressive quality of the optics had not diminished, but both eyepieces were damaged. We did not hold out much hope that they could be repaired. So it was a gift to receive the returned pair with new eyepieces!

Steve Grinley, from Bird Watcher’s Supply and Gift, assisted the club by evaluating these and other older binoculars. Earlier this year he helped the club with a discounted purchase of 10 new pairs of binoculars for our loaner box, and these two pairs bring our total to a dozen.

Each year, many participants enjoy birding with the BBC’s loaner binoculars, particularly at our urban walks. If you would like to borrow binoculars, look for the binocular icon in our field trip listings, indicating walks for which loaners are available. Contact the trip leader if you don’t see the icon.  If you have binoculars that you would like to donate to the BBC loaner box, please contact president@brooklinebirdclub.org.