Pete Dunne is one of birding’s best known ambassadors and has served as the Director of New Jersey Audubon Society’s Cape May Bird Observatory for over seventeen years.  An authority on birders and their optic needs he has served as a consultant to all the major optics companies and been instrumental in the development of such celebrated instruments as the Swarovski EL and Bausch and Lomb Elite.  In addition to authoring books, articles, and brochures on optics and their use, Pete is the founding editor of the “Tools of the Trade” column in Birding magazine and writes many of the product reviews found on this website.

Don Frieday is Director of Birding Programs for the Cape May Bird Observatory.  His favorite optics test so far: dropping a pair of Zeiss 7x42 Classics 20 feet onto a rock wall (they survived).  The runner up: fishing a Leica scope out of Hereford Inlet and using it for the rest of a birding competition.  A birder for twenty-five years, Don has led tours in Arizona, Colorado, California, Montana, Newfoundland, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming, among others, and has observed birds and other wildlife in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Kenya.  Don has been a member of the CMBO/Carl Zeiss Optical birding team in the World Series of Birding for seventeen years, and was on the Bushnell/Birder’s World Team in the Great Texas Birding Classic for five years.  A regional coordinator for the New Jersey Breeding Bird Atlas, Don is also a member of the N. J. Bird Records Committee and of the executive board of the N.J. Chapter of the Wildlife Society. 

Brian Moscatello has been a professional naturalist for more than twenty-seven years and has birded from Trinidad to Bonaventure Island, and from Attu to the Galapagos. Now the Sales Manager for Cape May Bird Observatory’s Center for Research & Education in Goshen, he looks forward to helping you avoid his past optical mistakes.  Brian spent his entire first summer’s wages on a Newtonian reflecting telescope. With two adjustable mirrors and a ring-mounted 6x finder scope, he soon learned the importance of collimation. Birding overtook his passion for astronomy and soon he had his first “birding” binoculars. As an eyeglass-wearer, following anything in flight with 10x50 Binolux binoculars with hard plastic eyecups presented a challenge. They were soon replaced by another 10x50 Porro prism—this time with fold-down rubber eyecups. Over the years he has used a succession of other optics large and small. He may be the only member of the FEO Team who birded with an army-surplus scope with a three-eyepiece rotating turret.