Binoculars intimidate. A monocular invites. One lens might be the most social piece of gear you can carry.
by: Michael Constantine Bhanos
written on: July 16th, 2026
Twice in the past month, complete strangers walked up to me because of a lens the size of a pocket flashlight. Once on a pullout above Big Sur. Once in a hot spring in Montana. Every one of them put it to their eye without a second of hesitation. So here’s the point, right up front: the monocular is the most shareable, most social, most approachable piece of glass you can own. It’s the gateway.
Here’s how I ended up with one.
I don’t know if it’s my age or just finally slowing down enough to smell the flowers, but somewhere along the way birding became an interest of mine. Not in a serious life-list way. More in a “wait, what is that” way. Which, as far as I can tell, is how it starts for everyone.
So when I saw Bushnell had a booth at the Sea Otter Classic cycling event, I was intrigued. Optics aren’t exactly the core market at a bike festival. I walked over with no agenda beyond honest curiosity. I told them the truth, which was that I had an old pair of Brunton binoculars that were fine but not great, and I was thinking about upgrading. We (AvantLink) work with Bushnell on the affiliate side, but I don’t think that’s what made the conversation good. They were genuinely interested in my enthusiastic story, and I was genuinely interested in the glass. They had a show special going. I left with a monocular.
That little tube changed how the rest of the trip went.
We drove down to Big Sur and pulled off above the rock shores where the sea lions haul out. I put the monocular to my eye and there they were, close and textured and alive. And then something happened that I did not expect. People at the pullout started drifting over. A couple of girls were looking out at the same rocks, seeing nothing but rocks. I handed them the monocular and said, you need to look down there with this. They did. Their whole faces changed.
That’s when I started paying attention to the object itself, not just what it showed me.
Here is my observation. Binoculars, for all their virtues, have a small chasm to bridge. Handing someone your binoculars is a bit of a production. There’s a strap, a hinge, two eyecups, a focus wheel, maybe a diopter they’ll accidentally spin. People hesitate. They say no thanks, I’m good.
A monocular has none of that friction. It passes between strangers as easily as a phone. One lens, one eye, one hand. Everyone intuitively knows how to hold it and where to put it. Nobody has ever needed instructions for a spyglass. It’s practically pirate-coded. You hand it over and people just look.
It happened again a week later, in Montana. After XOverland’s The Big Thing event, we soaked at some hot springs on the way home, and I had the monocular with me because there was a beautiful garden with birdfeeders right off the water. Even at close range, the glass did something the naked eye can’t. It pulled the bird all the way in. You could see the texture of the feathers, the deeper, richer color, the pattern work on the wings. And once again, people we didn’t know came over. In a hot spring, wearing swimsuits, total strangers put a monocular to their eye and started narrating what they saw. It wasn’t strange or odd. It was the opposite. It was an invitation.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Kirk, AvantLink’s Marketing Manager, was with me at Sea Otter and watched the same thing happen. People who would normally wave off an offer were drawn to it. It attracts. It doesn’t ask anything of anyone.
Since then I’ve added the Bushnell A5, a 10×42 waterproof binocular, to the fleet, and I love it. It’s the better instrument for actually watching. But the monocular I carry is the one that gets shared. Mine is the A series in tan, and the design itself seems in on the joke. It’s a fun color. It fits in a pocket. It has what I can only describe as a party mode built in. Packable, playful, and easy enough that the barrier to entry is zero.
So here’s my case. If you’re curious about optics, or you know someone who might be, don’t start with the big glass. Start with one lens. The monocular is the gateway. It gets you looking, and better than that, it gets the people around you looking too. It turns a pullout on Highway 1 or a bird feeder off a hot spring into a shared moment between strangers.
The sea lions were great. The birds were great. But honestly, the best thing I saw through that monocular was what happened around it.
