When we hear about people any where in Minnesota who are disturbing birds or being destructive on public lands for example ripping branches off trees to get better photos of a roosting owls, rip branches off live trees for perches, over tape use, using fishing poles with artificial bait that look like mice on the end of the fishing line to tease owls to get flight shots, or basically any act that is doing harm to the environment or to the birds we are asked to document the event and expose these people. Well below is documentation of how three people in the Sax-Zim Bog decided to be selfish and to manipulate an area in the Sax-Zim Bog to get photos of birds.
Well today I was guiding two people and we were coming south on the Admiral Rd. I was intrigue to see the newly erected feeders that were placed up on Thursday of this week. My friend Jim emailed me to inform me that he will be maintaining the Admiral Rd feeding station this year as the person who created the feeding site decided not to continue maintaining the site this winter. Jim inform me he put up a large platform feeder with black oil sunflower seeds on the tree that was previous used in the past. The platform feeder was NOT nailed to the tree but it was hung up instead and Jim also put up a large onion sack full of beef suet chunks on the same tree or possibly the tree across the road where in past a suet feeder was hung up there that attracted Boreal Chickadees. So I am coming down Admiral Road and I see a group of three photographers at the site. I get out of the car and the platform feeder was taken down, the suet bag was on top of a make shift snow bank along the side of the road with the platform feeder on top of the suet bag! I inform that the feeders belong to Jim XXXX and they said not much accept they will put the feeders back up when they are done photographing the birds. I asked why they moved the feeders ?, and they said they took the suet feeder down because they wanted to concentrate the birds to one spot rather than having the birds go to both feeders. They moved the platform feeder off the tree because they wanted to set the platform feeder so they can get a better background with the perches they set up. I looked at their set up with fresh branches clipped to tripods right over the platform feeder so they can get some photos. As I walked into the snow to hang up my suet feeders on the tree that I know Boreal Chickadees used last year I noticed the tree branches were ripped off that tree and the ground where they were standing were full of ripped branches! I looked at the perches they used on the tripods and saw they matched the areas where they ripped them off and the branches on the ground were branches they decided not to use for perches. Yes they are professional photographers because all of them have websites that sell photos they took and all their websites talk about how they have respect for wildlife, the environment and how they create "natural" photos of wildlife. http://colderbythelakebirding.blogspot.com/2010/12/destructive-photograhers.html ( to see the photos ) Its not just ripping off branches of live trees to get perches that angers me but to interfere with someone else feeders they put up to feed the birds and to deliberately concentrate birds to one area so they can get photos to me is wrong and I think everyone on this listserv would agree. If they want to manipulate birds they should create their own feeding station in their own neck of the woods! This Admiral Rd site is a good site to photograph birds and see Boreal Chickadees very close up but I ask that when you bird the Sax-Zim Bog please do not interfere with any bird feeding stations on private land or in this case on county land. Who are these photographers? They are Derek Griggs, Chad Griggs and Chad Gustafson. I ask everyone to boycott purchasing their photos for any type of publication! I been inform that their photos will NEVER be used for publication in the Loon which is good news and I hope other sources will follow suit. Mike Mike Hendrickson Duluth, Minnesota Website: http://www.mikehendricksonbirding.com Blog: http://colderbythelakebirding.blogspot.com/ ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
