Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 12:10:26 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Jeff Fishbein Subject: Re: Disrespectful Behavior of Sandhill Crane Watchers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Saturday morning I decided to visit Hoopers Island to photograph the Sandhill Crane. I have been a freelance photographer and birder for many years. When I arrived I parked my car along the road and walked up the driveway to ask permission to photograph the crane, just like it said in the posting. The property owner said it was ok. She seemed very concerned about the welfare of the bird which I thought was good. She told me to do nothing to scare the Crane. I respected her wishes and told her I would get no closer than 50 yards. This was plenty of distance. After photographing the bird for about a half and hour, I walked over and thanked her for allowing me to photograph the bird. I tried to be as courteous and polite as possible. When I returned home that night I was shocked to read on MDOsprey that this woman had told another birder that a photographer had showed up earlier with so called "intimidating lenses". She also told someone else that I had tried to sneak up on her and scared the "bejeebers out of her". This was a total outrageous lie. It sounded like other birders had visited her property and did some terrible, inexcusable things, but I had done absolutely nothing wrong. Like most photographers I have always had a good sense of birding and photography ethics and would never violate anybodys property rights. Also I would always consider the safety of the birds more important than any pictures I take. I just wanted a chance to explain to everybody what really happened in my particular situation. Jeff Fishbein Silver Spring Bltsfn@aol.com ========================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ========================================================================== ==========================================================================