[lesf]

Watched a man on my local patch trying to spot a Grasshopper Warbler, after a while his patience ran out and he got a music device out, I don't know an MP3 player or something doesn't really matter, and proceeded to play back the call of a male Grasshopper Warbler, in a flash out came the resident male, he got his tick and that was it. But I believe this practise to be both unethical and unacceptable that a bird should be needlessly disturbed at this sensitive time of the year when energy needed to raise families can't be wasted to satisfy an ignorant watcher.

What are your feeling on this subject?

[Fast_falkon]

I believe this is illegal

[KnockerNorton]

Originally Posted by Fast_falkon

I believe this is illegal

Only if you're using it to trap or take the bird. It's not illegal to use recordings to lure out birds, except possibly Schedule 1 birds at breeding time, when it might be construed as 'disturbing birds at the nest'.

This topic has come up before, and it depends what the aims are. If you're doing a survey, luring can be an extremely effective tool. Maybe this bloke was doing a gropper or breeding bird survey? Used sparingly, there's little or no evidence that playback has a meaningful impact. When birds are feeding young, many don't respond anyway. I'm not saying I'd encourage people to go around playing calls of everything just to tick them, but playback in itself is neither unethical nor unacceptable.

[Mannix]

I guess that if one person does it then no harm done, but if people were turning up every day and doing it then it would be unacceptable. I don't think it's something I would want to encourage on a large scale.

[Capercaillie71]

As others have said, I think it depends how often it is done. Once is probably not a problem. If it was a well-known site and several people were doing this every day then it is a problem. Personally I've tried tape-luring once or twice (with mixed results), but it's not something I feel very comfortable with.

Having said that, my daughter has one of these, which she left lying in the garden the other day. I inadvertently squeezed it while picking it up and within seconds there was a robin hovering less than a metre above my head!

[Steve Babbs]

Feel a heated exchange coming on again! Wonder what is worse hanging around, possibly near nest, for ages or a quick blast of recording. Problems come when same bird is repeatedly tape lured as can be the case at well known stake outs abroad. I don't use my mp3 player in the UK but won't be self-righteous as I do take it abroad. Although use it a lot less than many birders I know.

(Runs for cover as about to be shot down in flames.)

[bitterntwisted]

Originally Posted by Capercaillie71

Having said that, my daughter has one of these, which she left lying in the garden the other day. I inadvertently squeezed it while picking it up and within seconds there was a robin hovering less than a metre above my head!

I can't agree with this recommendation. Even with the limited usefulness of the 45 select species in the range you'd need a sack to carry them all and it would cost £269.55. An MP3 player is surely the more practical, useful and cost-effective solution.

Graham

[bitterntwisted]

More seriously, it's just cheating, isn't it? Where's the satisfaction in luring birds when it acheives nothing a bit of fieldcraft and patience won't also deliver? Even if disturbance is not that great (and surely if everyone did it then disturbance at any half-decent site would be an issue) I can't understand how people are pleased with sightings achieved this way. If I see a target bird by flushing it I feel disappointment, not pleasure.

Of course all this technology can help with what seem to be the objectives of the hobby - seeing more birds - but do they actually help with acheiving the real pleasure of using learned skills to get closer to nature?

The point of coarse fishing seems to be catching lots of fish - but if that's all there is to it why don't anglers use dredge nets?

Graham

[KnockerNorton]

Originally Posted by bitterntwisted

More seriously, it's just cheating, isn't it? Where's the satisfaction in luring birds when it acheives nothing a bit of fieldcraft and patience won't also deliver? Even if disturbance is not that great (and surely if everyone did it then disturbance at any half-decent site would be an issue) I can't understand how people are pleased with sightings achieved this way. If I see a target bird by flushing it I feel disappointment, not pleasure.

Of course all this technology can help with what seem to be the objectives of the hobby - seeing more birds - but do they actually help with acheiving the real pleasure of using learned skills to get closer to nature?

The point of coarse fishing seems to be catching lots of fish - but if that's all there is to it why don't anglers use dredge nets?

Graham

You use bins, don't you? Why not just use your eyes? Seems like cheating. Ditto driving to a reserve. Why not walk? Isn't going to a reserve cheating too, as the habitat is managed for the birds and hides placed in convenient locations. Seems a bit like cheating? Why not go and find birds where it's not all laid on? Walking there, just using your eyes, and fieldcraft to creep up on them without a comfy hide? And what's with all this 'clothes' nonsense? Seems a bit like cheating, wearing a rainproof jacket. I always go birding within walking distance of my burrow, using just my wonky eyes, and I creep up on the birds using just natural cover, avoiding those sissy footpaths (too easy!), and I ALWAYS go commando. Anything else is just pansy birding! Nettles sting a bit though.

[bitterntwisted]

Originally Posted by Poecile

You use bins, don't you? Why not just use your eyes? Seems like cheating. Ditto driving to a reserve. Why not walk? Isn't going to a reserve cheating too, as the habitat is managed for the birds and hides placed in convenient locations. Seems a bit like cheating? Why not go and find birds where it's not all laid on? Walking there, just using your eyes, and fieldcraft to creep up on them without a comfy hide? And what's with all this 'clothes' nonsense? Seems a bit like cheating, wearing a rainproof jacket. I always go birding within walking distance of my burrow, using just my wonky eyes, and I creep up on the birds using just natural cover, avoiding those sissy footpaths (too easy!), and I ALWAYS go commando. Anything else is just pansy birding! Nettles sting a bit though.

Well you've very drolly demostrated that any line is essentially arbitrary, but conversely why bother at all with wild birds? Why not just go to zoos? (Indeed, why bother looking for birds yourself, why not just wait for others to find them and send news to you via commercial electronic means and then make sure you turn up on a weekend afternoon when someone else will have the bird in his scope for you?.. Eh?... Oh!)

In fact we have a general concensus about where that line should be drawn to maximise enjoyment, and as people become more expert and experienced they derive greater pleasure from a more restrictive line, e.g. self-found lists, local patch lists, green lists of birds seen only by bike? Don't we all get more purist as we get better?

Also, does the pre-technological birding cartoon you've sketched not actually have some romantic appeal? Perverse as it will seem to some, I hate hides and do tend to think that birds seen from them are cheapened and diluted. Part of experiencing a bird is experiencing the weather, the landscape, the sky that it is experiencing. And am I the only person who has tried birding without binoculars to improve ID skills? ( OK, probably I am! :( )

Graham

[KnockerNorton]

Originally Posted by bitterntwisted

, but conversely why bother at all with wild birds? Why not just go to zoos?

or the pub, like other people?!

Originally Posted by bitterntwisted

derive greater pleasure from a more restrictive line, e.g. self-found lists, local patch lists, green lists of birds seen only by bike? Don't we all get more purist as we get better?

No!

I think the point here is that there is no line. So do what you wanna do, as long as it's legal and you don't cause any (much) harm. It's a hobby for most people, meant to be enjoyable. Other people trying to apply 'rules of the game' for you should go back to their tiddlywinks.

[Hotspur]

Originally Posted by bitterntwisted

And am I the only person who has tried birding without binoculars to improve ID skills? ( OK, probably I am! :( )

Graham

This does not surprise me one jot. You aren't the only one. A long lost (and banned i believe) member called Hanno from Finland used to claim that as there was modification to your vision, you couldnt actually see the bird, merely a representation of the bird and as such couldn't tick it. He was mental.

[KnockerNorton]

Originally Posted by Hotspur

This does not surprise me one jot. You aren't the only one. A long lost (and banned i believe) member called Hannu from Finland used to claim that as there was modification to your vision, you couldnt actually see the bird, merely a representation of the bird and as such couldn't tick it. He was mental.

Banned?! For what? All my gobbing off hasn't even got a warning from a teacher, sorry, moderator!

All this ticking and listing, it's all a but pointless to me. Like it's some kind of sport. I'm a bit more esoteric about it all, and enjoy things for what they are. Listing and ticking reduces the beauty of the world to some kind of crass autistic sport. But that's just my personal line, and each to their own.

[Sancho]

Originally Posted by Hotspur

A long lost (and banned i believe) member called Hannu from Finland used to claim that as there was modification to your vision, you couldnt actually see the bird, merely a representation of the bird and as such couldn't tick it. He was mental.

That has actually occurred to me before....I used to think "If I can 'see' the bird through a series of lenses and prisms and (shock) a mirror, then the light-rays reflected from the sun off the bird aren't coming directly to my eyes at all, so all I'm seeing is....the bird's reflection"!!!. I stopped worrying about it though. Eventually.

On the tape-lures issue, I'm no expert but I'm uncomfortable with it. We don't know what bird-song really means. Playing a recording to a nesting bird especially could affect its behaviour; we could be playing the avian equivalent of something like "Hey, Get the Hell out of Here, I'm Bigger than You and I'll Tear You to Shreds". Which is why the bird pops up to see what's going on, i.e. who and what the challenger is. I understand some of the posts above were tongue-in-cheek, but I don't think using binoculars, clothes or hides compares, as they aren't actually designed to influence the bird's behaviour.

[KnockerNorton]

Originally Posted by Sancho

That has actually occurred to me before....I used to think "If I can 'see' the bird through a series of lenses and prisms and (shock) a mirror, then the light-rays reflected from the sun off the bird aren't coming directly to my eyes at all, so all I'm seeing is....the bird's reflection"!!!. I stopped worrying about it though. Eventually.

On the tape-lures issue, I'm no expert but I'm uncomfortable with it. We don't know what bird-song really means. Playing a recording to a nesting bird especially could affect its behaviour; we could be playing the avian equivalent of something like "Hey, Get the Hell out of Here, I'm Bigger than You and I'll Tear You to Shreds". Which is why the bird pops up to see what's going on, i.e. who and what the challenger is. I understand some of the posts above were tongue-in-cheek, but I don't think using binoculars, clothes or hides compares, as they aren't actually designed to influence the bird's behaviour.

Ah, the glory of drawing up your own rules with your own personal justification! ha ha!

I watch birds by capturing sunlight reflected off a bird that is caught on a digital drive by a third party, and then beamed to my eye through a telly, courtesy of the BBC. Sometimes it's Springwatch, sometimes The Natural World. I don't worry about it though

Re song, we do actually know what much of it means, and it's pre-nesting and post-nesting that gets most response from many species, as this is when song is important. Nesting birds are usually much less territorial, as territory boundaries relax when they're feeding young. So playback is much less effective - the birds just don't seem to care as much (ever noticed it goes a bit quiet in June?). Also, it's not just song that you can use, but also alarm/mobbing calls, and different types of call work in different circumstances.

Many birds also have a site-based dominance hierarchy, so even if you play a song in a territory the bird already knows it's top dog, so it doesn't feel very threatened. It mainly seems curious, and very quickly loses interest.

We can't know what they're thinking, but you cannot keep a bird dancing away to playback for as long as you wish. They come (sometimes), they see, they get bored in a few mins, they bugger off.

[Sancho]

Originally Posted by Poecile

We can't know what they're thinking, but you cannot keep a bird dancing away to playback for as long as you wish. They come (sometimes), they see, they get bored in a few mins, they bugger off.

That's amazing. Do you reckon they realise after a while that it's not a real bird they're listening to? Excuse stupid question...as you said, we can't know what they're thinking... (And just for the record, if it meant getting a glimpse of one of the handful of elusive Irish GSW's, I'd happily use a lure, as long as it wasn't at a breeding site, which may or may not exist).

[KnockerNorton]

Originally Posted by Sancho

That's amazing. Do you reckon they realise after a while that it's not a real bird they're listening to? Excuse stupid question...as you said, we can't know what they're thinking... (And just for the record, if it meant getting a glimpse of one of the handful of elusive Irish GSW's, I'd happily use a lure, as long as it wasn't at a breeding site, which may or may not exist).

Dunno, but many players don't have the high frequencies of most bird calls, so something is 'missing'. But they're probably just not getting the required stimulus/response (aural or visual).

[Hanno]

I have no qualms using a recorder here in Vietnam. There are hardly any birders, I use it only for a short time each time, and without playback there is little chance of seeing some of the skulkers.