Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2000 09:06:20 -0400 Reply-To: Darius Ecker Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Darius Ecker Organization: Prodigy Internet Subject: Disrespectful Behavior I've been reading over all the posts about the unfortunate incident where the Sandhill Crane showed up. While I agree with most of what everyone has said, there are a couple of points I'd like to make. First, although I'm reading between the line here a bit, it does seem like the homeowner (and neighbors) didn't quite know what they were agreeing to when they opened up their property. Maybe we (us birders) could have done a better job by organizing groups to visit the private residence. By design, a group has a leader, and the leader's job is to see that the property owner's wishes are adhered to. It's a compromise. The choices thought about so far have been 1. Don't publish birds on private property or 2. Publish with no supervision. Let's consider "Publish with supervision". It does allow access to the people who are willing to go with the group, and the group leader makes sure the property owner's wishes are met. Howard County MOS has done this several times recently and it's a good alternative to "no access". Next, there were a couple of messages about the photographer. Now, those of you who know me know that I'm an amateur photographer and that I love to photograph birds. Next, a fact of life is that bird photographers have big lenses. This is a good thing. Usually, if you try to photograph a bird with a short lens, you end up getting too close, and the bird flies away. Using a smaller camera does you no good, unless, of course, you want to take a photo of the neighbor's house (sarcasm alert... sarcasm alert....). I'm not sure what happened here, but I'm pretty confident that anyone with a large lens was pointing it at the Sandhill Crane. Now, what probably occurred was a neighbor or passerby was curious because they had never seen a large camera lens. I get this all the time. I've even had people think I was holding a gun. You just have to be polite and explain what you are doing. That works okay if someone asks you a question. Sound like in this case the person kept their curiosity quiet and complained later. What's the solution ? If you asked permission before taking a photograph you should also explain that you have a tripod and a large lens, which you need so you don't have to get too close to the bird. At the point where the property owner gives you permission, I'm not sure what's wrong with going ahead and doing the photography. I would hesitate to do this in a residential neighborhood where the houses are very close. In this case you may want to as permission of the neighbors as well. It's easy to give this advice now knowing the circumstances. To be honest, if I had the property owner's permission, I'm not sure I'd think to do it myself. In the end, birders in general have made a bad impression. Unless we can identify the party in question and make some attempt to let them know the behavior was wrong, I can't see a good side to this. If this attempt received a negative response, I would certainly support Norm's decision to "turn off" MDOSPREY for the culprits. Darius Ecker Columbia, Maryland. ========================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ========================================================================== ==========================================================================