I’m wondering if people are taking the time to educate people doing this. If
done in a non-confrontational, friendly manner, peoples choices can be changed
by a better understanding of how their behavior affects wildlife.
Obviously it’s not always a good idea to do this, but I find it helpful when I
can. I volunteered in Indian peaks wilderness for eight years doing the same
thing. Non-confrontational education can make a big difference in peoples
behavior. Most people want to do the right thing and a lot of people don’t
understand how their behavior affects the environment or the animals . Many
will make a different choice next time. ( Starting with a nice chat about how
cool the bird is followed by a “we’re you aware…” statement.)
Don’t try to do this if it doesn’t feel right to you but, if it does,
please do.
Deb Carstensen, Arapahoe county
Sent from my iPhone
> On Nov 2, 2022, at 7:01 PM, David Suddjian <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> Thank you, Ted, for this interesting shift in view on this point.
>
> I've been thinking lately on my field trips about the disturbance we birders
> cause to bird activity through our regular everyday birding. Birds flush, or
> move away, or otherwise interrupt their normal activities as we approach and
> watch, and point and call out our finds, as we pull up the car to look or get
> out of the car. At some locations there are multiple and varied sources of
> human and other disturbance over the course of a day. This is reality, and it
> is inevitable in the way we do things to find and enjoy birds. Why, I
> interrupt and flush my feeder birds everytime I go out the front door, but I
> don't think it harms them much or any.
>
> I think the key is not to deliberately, unnecessarily and repeatedly press
> birds so that they move or interrupt their actions. This is most problematic
> when "rare birds" or others that folks really want to see or "get" are sought
> after intensely by birders over a period of days. But except for our
> difficulty in seeing the bird ourselves after it has been disturbed, it is
> often hard to assess what the actual impact is under normal conditions. I'm
> not saying there is no impact, but what exactly is it really? Much birder
> disturbance goes unappreciated by others in the birding community. Several
> years ago I helped put a good Ovenbird spot on the map with a hotspot in Deer
> Creek Canyon in JeffCo. I've since wondered about the birders who go up there
> to that same stretch of road each May and June and play recordings at the
> Ovenbirds to try to draw them into view. There are countless occasions like
> that.
>
> David Suddjian
> Ken Caryl Valley
> Littleton, CO
>
>> On Wed, Nov 2, 2022 at 6:22 PM Ted Floyd <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hey, all.
>>
>> Here's a somewhat different perspective on flushing birds:
>>
>> https://www.aba.org/how-to-know-the-birds-no-53-the-situational-ethics-of-seeing-a-gadwall/
>>
>> Ted Floyd
>> Lafayette, Boulder County
>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 2, 2022 at 2:51 PM Kathleen Sullivan <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> This morning at about 9:00 I was headed to Heron Pond to see the
>>> Yellow-crowned Night Heron and witnessed another incident of bad birder
>>> behavior. Two birders in the parking lot were just ahead of me and headed
>>> to the North shore. I was going at it from the south shore and I met an
>>> experienced birder who had just seen the bird (within the half hour) and
>>> gotten a photo and she volunteered to take me right where she had seen it.
>>> Then from across the pond we saw the two birders I had originally seen at
>>> the parking lot crawling down the bank almost to the shoreline right where
>>> the bird had been seen.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> We could not find it again with my scope and her good camera plus another
>>> man came up who had also seen it from that spot just before. We stood
>>> there for half an hour and the two were there for quite awhile but the
>>> heron did not show obviously driven into the reeds. Amazingly, some other
>>> people who did not appear to be birders but had a camera also crawled down
>>> the bank.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Folks, we’ve got to get a handle on this. Please do not approach birds,
>>> play tape, or do anything that will disturb them. In addition if you see
>>> something, say something. Thank you. I assure you that if those birders
>>> were not on the other side of the pond, they would have gotten some
>>> feedback from me! Sorry for this long post but it’s important.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Kathleen “Sully” Sullivan, CFO member, former Board member Boulder Audubon
>>> Chapter.
>>>
>>> Boulder, CO.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from Mail for Windows
>>>
>>>
>>>
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