Fowl play puts birders, photographers at odds
OTTAWA • Shouting matches and crude language have invaded a world of bucolic harmony: birding.
The bird world has rival human factions: purists who admire birds from a distance, and some photographers who put out bait — live mice from a pet store — to get the dramatic shot of a bird of prey swooping in.
The two sides don’t play nicely. And conflict has grown since digital cameras opened up nature photography to amateurs, while cellphones, Facebook and GPS help crowds converge on rare birds.
“It almost comes to blows sometimes if birders are going to see an owl and there are photographers there,” said Mike Runtz, a naturalist who teaches biology at Carleton University.
“There’s a real amount of verbal abuse that goes on between the two groups. They don’t like each other. Photographers don’t like being told what they can and cannot do and birders don’t like seeing these birds harassed.”
At the heart of the fractious dispute are owls, especially Arctic species like the great grey and the snowy owl that often come to the Ottawa region in winter.
There are great greys around Ottawa this year.
The Ottawa Field- Naturalists’ Club posts sightings of birds on its website, but has stopped telling where to see owls “due to increasing and widespread concerns of disturbance of wildlife and property.” The Ontario Field Ornithologists, a provincial organization of birders, also omits owl sightings.
Owls are fairly tolerant of humans, especially the big, photogenic Arctic species, Runtz said.
“And since these owls tend to stay in one area once they turn up … that makes them very prone to being harassed by photographers.”
Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry says it’s legal to use mice from a lab or pet store because they aren’t wildlife. But if you trap or catch a wild mouse to use as bait, you need a small game licence.
As for the owl, the ministry says baiting is legal as long as the birds is not “killed, injured, captured or harassed as a result.”
But Runtz argues it is wrong to train wild animals to approach humans for food.
He said Facebook and Flickr sites “have become trophy rooms for photographs,” replacing the old trophy rooms full of animals with antlers and horns.
And photographing owls is a big-money sport: A number of expert guides will take well- to- do amateur photographers on weeklong “snowy owl workshops” in Ontario and Quebec for $ 3,000 or more. This raises the pressure to deliver the best shot.
Runtz once saw a group with lawn chairs in the snow, and they had put out sticks where an owl could perch about f i ve metres away. “They would throw mice down, hoping the hawk owl would land on the perch.
Runtz t old t hem t hey should not do this “and they were very vocally rude to me about sticking my nose in other people’s business. “It really is remarkable.” Runtz also said there’s a place near Kingston where owls are known to gather in winter in the forest, and photographers will find a sleeping owl and throw things at the bird to get a shot with its eyes open. An owl flushed out in daytime may be attacked by other birds.
Ottawa birder Bruce Di Labio said he sees some grey area in putting out bait, because he isn’t sure owls are being harmed.
“The argument goes back and forth: We feed ( other) birds, so what’s the difference? … I never found an owl that died of being overweight, and I have found numerous owls that starved to death.”
But he was surprised by the behaviour of a snowy owl a few years ago. It watched him stop nearby and “the next thing I knew it was down on a fence post, begging” for a handout.
He agrees friction is growi ng, i ncluding shouting matches. When great greys came south in large numbers a few years back, “people would show up with a cooler full of live mice and be constantly feeding them, and there would be a shouting match going on. Not grabbing each other but definitely a heated argument.
“Baiting has become more popular since the invention of the digital camera and everybody wants to get the greatest shot,” Di Labio said.
Before digital, “the old guys would spend a week in the woods to get one good shot. Now you just throw down a live mouse.”
THAT MAKES THEM VERY PRONE TO BEING HARASSED …