[Maine-birds] Re: Owl again

Yes making the comparison between an Owl and a Warbler is not by any means equal. But my argument is that the owl has been seen hunting and eating rodents despite the presence of people in the field thus one can't really claim that people are preventing it from hunting (which a majority of is done at night when people are very unlikely to still be there anyway). To be fair, I've only seen one person say that people were encroaching on the 20-30 foot distance, while most others claim to be 100-300 feet if not further away. 

And the second part of my argument is that people are way too quick to jump and say that taking photos is harassment or that being X distance from a bird automatically = harassment. With the last GGOW in Milford, if you parked on one side of a two lane road, you were good, you parked on the other you were harassing the owl. I think there needs to be a clear distinction between true harassment and what at most could be considered a disturbance. 

Lastly, I am an amateur photographer and I took several hundred photos of the GGOW in Milford. I did it for me not anybody else. I want to look back and see the birds that I've had the pleasure to witness and share those experiences with my friends and family. I personally don't think I should feel shamed or looked down on because I took a picture of an owl. I didn't violate any part of birding ethics, and nobody I witnessed there did either, and from a vast majority of the posts I see with the Searsmont GGOW, people are continuing to do more of the same, with maybe one or two reported instances of people crossing the line, which has yet to be well defined anyway. 

 

On Tuesday, February 28, 2017 at 11:08:43 AM UTC-5, BAB wrote:

I wonder if the controversy over the great gray might not be solved with an appeal to respecting comfort distances.  While it's true a warbler can still find food in its immediate vicinity even with a photographer 25 feet away, it's quite different for an owl that needs a hay field to hunt over.  Professional wildlife photographers don't harass their target species.  What is the purpose of an amateur needing to get so close, especially with a 500mm lens?  Is it for stock images?  There are currently more than enough excellent stock photos of great gray owls, and any additional images would yield about $0.75 in that particular market.  Or is getting close just a personal objective, sort of like Hemingway proving he can still shoot one more elephant?  If you love the wildlife you are pursuing with a camera, why would you purposely harass the animal?  If you don't love your wild photographic targets, perhaps it's time to move on to landscapes, architecture, or portraits.

BAB

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Bruce Bartrug
Nobleboro, Maine, USA
bbar...@gmail.com
www.brucebartrug.com

•The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.  - Albert Einstein

•In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. -Martin Luther King

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