The usual line is that it is just "two bad apples". Since I spend a fair amount of my birding time photographing, I've seen a lot of photographers. The number of bad apples is more in the range twenty to forty. (Think: in the course of one day two of us we documented 3 of them - how many more went undocumented ?). In the case of Snowy Owls I'd expect about 1/4 of the photographers to be wandering the dunes. Owls in particular reward bad behavior with better photographs.
Or should I cite the case of the NY photographer who visited a local birding spot and was apparently taping in the breeding Kentucky Warblers for a better shot ? There are lots of examples of this because there are lots of people doing it, not just two. While it is still the minority it's quite a significant minority, and therefore a quite a significant problem for sedentary wintering birds and breeding birds. Phil Jeffrey -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
