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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jurek" data-source="post: 3786860" data-attributes="member: 3357">At the risk of saying the obvious. Birds in the field are much further than in an indoors laser trial (30m or more). The beam shines "near" the bird from the position of observers, but actually meters away. The light is also largely blocked by vegetation. Often the light stops on branches and leaves closest to the observers and does not reach the bird at all. In more open forest, the laser is useless because it is invisible in the sun, and must be pointed at some area of shadow even further away from the bird. There may be additional factor that a shy bird normally hides its head and forebody behind vegetation. And that bird vision is different from humans, for example blinking reflex is much faster. In the field, I never seen a bird taking notice of the laser pointer at all. In one case, the light shone actually on the back of an antbird. The antbird was moving in an extremely dense tangle of vegetation. It hopped so that the light was on its back, took no notice of it at all and then hopped further. It may or may not be possible to tease a wild bird like domestic cats are teased by laser, but I never tried it.</blockquote>