Birders beware of what you report

Sad Story

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-birder-31-oct31,0,3757634.story

Oh no. Makes one think, doesn't it.

it is a sad event. It is similar to my not telling people the exact location of the cypripeduim orchids . Lee

That is sad..but it maybe would have happened regardless. Of course that will remain unknown for now.

It's not the birders watching it, but the repeated flushing to get flight views. If they'd just kept still and watched from a distance (like the Birder's Code of Conduct states http://www.birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?a=494 ), the hawk might never have seen the owl.

Resin

Seems to me that birdwatchers should know that they should be neither seen nor heard. Flushing out a burrowing owl just seems wrong.

I know I'll be more cautions when out and about now. I've had a hawk get a bird in my yard before and I felt just so guilty, like i was part of a conspiracy to lure the birds!!!

ha. JINX, Resin! Nice cross post!

omydog! " three million adults" -- hrmm, very odd someone didn't take action. Sounds like a riot.

I agree with Resin. When I read the article, and they said people were flushing it out just to see...I just thought, that's so wrong. In any animal species people should always watch at a distance, so not to disturb it. I haven't read bird guides nor am I an avid birder, but I think a lot of that would be common sense.

Don't mess with the birds, leave them alone.

Ideally, observers should not interact in ANY way with what they observe, whether they're documenting birds, taking field notes on a hike, or staring down a microscope. I do my best not to flush birds accidentally, and would not be at all enthused about someone doing it for the sake of a photo! I have been guilty of benefiting from accidental flushes, like the mourning dove I startled off her nest just outside Dillon, MT last summer. When I saw the nest only a few feet off my shoulder, it was just too tempting to set the camera on macro and peep the lens up over the edge--but I did NOT touch the nest, the chicks, or anything I could avoid! I also made sure to be less stealthy in that brushy area after that, hoping I could keep from disturbing any other working moms...because I would have hated to feel the way those Chicago birders did. Then again, I was a free range reader as a child (which means every time the school or city library called asking if ten-year-olds should be reading what I'd just checked out, my mom told them it was MY choice, not theirs) and cut my teeth on the ethics of field observation reading and re-reading Innocent Killers, Jane Goodall (pre-chimps for the most part) and her husband Hugo Van Lawick's amazing study of African wild dogs, golden jackals, and spotted hyenas. For contrast, read up on the fate of 'Bones' the lion in the classic Cry of the Kalahari.