[mou] Bird photo affirmations

[Laura Erickson]

I, too, am very impressed with a great many of the photos I've seen this 
year.  And I've seen some bad behavior by some birders and 
photographers.  But I don't think we should be too hasty to judge one 
another.  I'm VERY opposed to doing anything to rouse a sleeping Boreal 
Owl--when they're wandering and don't have a cavity to spend the day in, 
they're very vulnerable, and their open eyes are a dead giveaway to 
chickadees and jays of their presence.  But if they're actively hunting, 
why do we instantly assume that nearby photographers are bothering 
them?  When a birder or photographer is very close to an owl, he or she has 
often spent a long time creeping in, not bothering the owl at 
all.  Sometimes (and I've seen this happen more than once), a photographer 
gets set up to take distant shots and owls have actually come closer to the 
photographer.    Someone driving by may make assumptions that aren't at all 
fair.

I can be a real b*tch when it comes to protecting birds because I'd far 
rather err on the side of a bird than a person any time.  But the truth is, 
northern owls are pretty tolerant, and when we're not rousing them or 
luring them near roads or startling them so they fly across a road, I don't 
object to people setting up and taking pictures, even if they've spent 
their entire discretionary income on camera equipment.  All this talk about 
whose lens is longer than whose seems a bit unseemly to me.  Can't we just 
get along?


Laura Erickson
Duluth, MN


Producer, "For the Birds" radio program
<http://www.lauraerickson.com/>

There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of 
birds.  There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of 
nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

                                 --Rachel Carson