[obol] Re: Burrowing Owl harassment: Please take care when posting reports on eBird
- From: Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>
- To: Pat Waldron <puma@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 16:41:57 -0800
Thanks Pat,
I'd like to think that birders can learn to behave themselves even
around Burrowing Owls that decide to locate along public rights-of-way.
I suspect that at least 95% of the birders on OBOL would not condone
this kind of behavior, and would apply peer pressure to discourage it if
they saw a birding acquaintance doing this in the field.
However, there are increasingly more new birders who get their
information straight through electronic media, without any kind of
in-person mentoring. Add in the culture of the "selfie" and the idea
that everyone needs to get their own personal screen-filling photo of
every owl they see, and you have a recipe for harassment.
There will be those who'll assert that owls aren't really affected by
this kind of harassment. But -- coming back into the Corvallis field
notes task after a 7-year vacation -- I'm struck by how few Burrowing
Owls are around this year, compared with my last stint in this job.
Back in the early 2000s there were regularly 3 or 4 Burrowing Owls in
the general area of Peoria, plus often one around Baskett Slough,
another one east of Salem, sometimes one in the Dever-Conner area north
of Albany, one or two in northern Lane Co. near Junction City, and
occasionally one on the coast.
This winter we just seem to have just this one individual that got
chased around and around three days ago, plus the one out on Yaquina
Head.
There are no doubt other problems facing these birds besides harassment
on their wintering grounds. But with just 1-2 birds per year showing up
now, we're dangerously lose to losing the entire wintering population,
just as the Willamette Valley breeding population apparently blinked out
decades ago.
Good birding,
Joel
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
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