Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:10:40 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Greg Downing Subject: Re: Snowy Owl Situation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Norm, I strongly agree with all that you say here, in fact I was thinking the same thing about the repeat visitors. I myself have visited the snowy and had the opportunity to photograph the bird. I have been there once and decided not to go back since there was such a crowd and it reminded me of a media circus. I will have to admit the following: When I arrived on the scene I drove around for about an hour before I was waved toward the barn on Oland Road where the owl sat atop a telephone pole. I was so excited that I pulled over and immediately pulled out my camera and tripod and set it up in front of my car. After a moment I inched closer to get a better shot and was actually at the mouth of someone's driveway. In my excitement I was not thinking what I was doing. At one point a school bus stopped and scolded me and another person for trespassing while we were standing at the end of the driveway. I immediately moved back to the shoulder of the road (about ten feet or so) and the driver moved on. I felt pretty stupid actually and realized the error of my ways. From this experience I have learned to be more conscious of what I am doing and not let the excitement cloud my thinking. I am an in-experienced birder and now realize that there is more to birding than just the birding part. One has to try to contain the excitement for a moment and think about where you are going and what you are doing. I won't do this again. My Point here is this; I can understand how some inexperienced birders, such as myself, as well as experienced birders can get caught up in the moment and lose sight of what they are doing whether it be wandering onto someone's property without permission, standing in the middle of the road oblivious to traffic, or anything else. Perhaps when another birder sees this happen they should speak up immediately before things get out of hand. I think we should police ourselves and other birders before things get out of hand as they have here. Norm, this site is an invaluable service and we can use it to our advantage to try to educate people on these ethic issues. Perhaps we should even have to read a birders code of ethics before joining such lists just to keep us in check. Happy, Safe, Exciting and Ethical Birding to ALL! Greg Downing Parkton, MD gregdowning@mindspring.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Norm Saunders" To: Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 3:24 AM Subject: [MDOSPREY] Snowy Owl Situation > Part of the problem, as Mr. Mumford himself noted, is that people are > going back, over and over, to see the owl. I believe Mr. Mumford said > it was his eleventh trip? Yes, go see a rare bird. Enjoy it. But once > you've seen it--stay away so as not to overtax the sensibilities of the > folks that live there. > > The rest, not trespassing, not blocking the road, all of that should be > common sense. Sadly, birders I saw up there were almost arrogant in the > way they stood in the road in the face of oncoming cars. It is indeed a > sad situation, one that when it arises makes me wonder at the ultimate > value of MDOsprey and lists like it. Communication is wonderful but > when it results in irresponsible behavior perhaps it is time to think > about curtailing that communication. > ======================= > Norm Saunders > Colesville, Montgomery County, MD > marshhawk@worldnet.att.net > > ======================================================================= > To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com > with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey > ======================================================================= ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================