The darker side of listing (2 Viewers)

[Himalaya]

I always respond passively and these situations have never turned into anything too serious but most recently I have been asked by a female security guard from her squad car whether I had ever hear of Al-Qaeda when walking with camera along a side-walk near Dallas. I had taken a few shots of a bright pink sunset and she suggested that this was an abnormal thing to want to do so I should make myself scarce to avoid being taken in.

My attempts to get these folk to see the funny side of the situation seem to always fail though - maybe my style of humour is a very British thing ?

I worry one day that one day I might be accused of being Al Qaeda etc. I am actually of Pakistani origin and Muslim - I have brown skin and a foreign name. So far no one has ever stopped or questionned me. There are very few non-white British walking around with binoculars, cameras. I do think that if I am ever hiking in moorland one day some one might accuse me of "Mujahidin" training. The fact that some of those involved in 7/7 were doing all those tough sports in Wales and the Lake District does not help.

Maybe the fact that I actually belong to an ethnic minority on Britain would deter me form being harassed. They would hate to be seen to looking racist.

 

[Jan-Paul Charteris]

I worry one day that one day I might be accused of being Al Qaeda etc. I am actually of Pakistani origin and Muslim - I have brown skin and a foreign name. So far no one has ever stopped or questionned me. There are very few non-white British walking around with binoculars, cameras. I do think that if I am ever hiking in moorland one day some one might accuse me of "Mujahidin" training. The fact that some of those involved in 7/7 were doing all those tough sports in Wales and the Lake District does not help.

Maybe the fact that I actually belong to an ethnic minority on Britain would deter me form being harassed. They would hate to be seen to looking racist.

If this story here is anything to go by I doubt very much any of us are safe!

Jan

 

[Trystan]

If this story here is anything to go by I doubt very much any of us are safe!

Jan

Well he clearly broke the law, he deserves punishment!

 

[Johann Sebastian Bach]

That's a first, being told off for something on one of the few occasions I did behave, on the principle that I might have done it were I not living in a city at the time

Sorry if it sounded like a telling off, Jan Paul. I've already admitted to trespass on the forum so shouts of "hypocrite" would follow any strong words.
My involvement in F&M in 2001 was deep and personal and included a strong possibility of one infection being caused by an individual roaming where he'd no right to be.
Jane's quite correct - the majority of contagion occurs via the air, from one animal to another. However, other methods include the virus being spread by humans. It only needs one such example of carelessness to cause a needless tragedy.

Peter

 

[Jane Turner]

I was involved (as a consultant) in the planning and risk management of the Foot and mouth inquiry. It was remarkable how much of the infection appeared to be deliberate i.e. outside the wind blown plume

 

[Robin Edwards]

I worry one day that one day I might be accused of being Al Qaeda etc. I am actually of Pakistani origin and Muslim - I have brown skin and a foreign name. So far no one has ever stopped or questionned me. There are very few non-white British walking around with binoculars, cameras. I do think that if I am ever hiking in moorland one day some one might accuse me of "Mujahidin" training. The fact that some of those involved in 7/7 were doing all those tough sports in Wales and the Lake District does not help.

Maybe the fact that I actually belong to an ethnic minority on Britain would deter me form being harassed. They would hate to be seen to looking racist.

So on the subject of the darker side or birding rather than listing, I'm sure there are some interesting tales of how birders managed to get through some dark, searching questions when exiting Israel?

 

[KenM]

I worry one day that one day I might be accused of being Al Qaeda etc. I am actually of Pakistani origin and Muslim - I have brown skin and a foreign name. So far no one has ever stopped or questionned me. There are very few non-white British walking around with binoculars, cameras. I do think that if I am ever hiking in moorland one day some one might accuse me of "Mujahidin" training. The fact that some of those involved in 7/7 were doing all those tough sports in Wales and the Lake District does not help.

Maybe the fact that I actually belong to an ethnic minority on Britain would deter me form being harassed. They would hate to be seen to looking racist.

I think you are right!....I'm fair haired and blue-eyed just like my colleague..and we were 'Birding' with Bins and camera at Canary Wharf during late Sep.2001 (post 911 probably the most site sensitive area in the UK), and we were rigorously questioned by security (even though we had ''photo'' permits to Bird and Film). After the Security had satisfied themselves that we were Bona-fide they left. A few minutes later we witnessed a Moslem gentleman with two children (kneeling in a Northerly direction) before rising, and proceeded to video the buildings in the centre of Canada Square! Needless to say he was not challenged!

 

[Richard Klim]

So on the subject of the darker side or birding rather than listing, I'm sure there are some interesting tales of how birders managed to get through some dark, searching questions when exiting Israel?

...or even at check-in before boarding an El Al flight to Israel. To convince my interrogator that I was a bona fide birder, I had to go through my field guide and describe which birds I expected to see at the major sites I planned to visit.

 

[birdboybowley]

Re Israel - the secutiry girls were far more interested with my Palestinian-type scarf and where I'd acquired it than anything else. I really wanted to say it was part of my disguise when I was on a daring raid to save civilians from the baddies during 'the unrest'. Telling them the truth that it came from the pound shop in Chichester seemed such an anti-climax....

 

[MJB]

I worry one day that one day I might be accused of being Al Qaeda etc. I am actually of Pakistani origin and Muslim - I have brown skin and a foreign name. So far no one has ever stopped or questionned me. There are very few non-white British walking around with binoculars, cameras. I do think that if I am ever hiking in moorland one day some one might accuse me of "Mujahidin" training. The fact that some of those involved in 7/7 were doing all those tough sports in Wales and the Lake District does not help.

Maybe the fact that I actually belong to an ethnic minority on Britain would deter me form being harassed. They would hate to be seen to looking racist.

A friend of mine is of part-Indian origin; he has rather a piratical physiognomy and has quite often been asked (politely) to confirm his identity, but since he is quite a big chap, many who might ask him who he is, pretend they haven't seen him and walk away!
MJB

 

[Tideliner]

Hi Oliver , yes I do remember our talk about the pros and cons of introducing sea eagles. As for the records of rare birds as I said Johann , all records are in my final report and the relevant conservation and local council planning officers which means if its birds are the issue then all bird records. This does not mean it gets passed onto amateur recording officers though it may happen. There have been dozens of my records that have found their way into the Norfolk Bird report via my bosses and not under my name.

Not that my faith of amature county recorders is that strong. A few years ago i ringed about a dozen ( cant remember the exact number with out looking back through volumes of notes ) jack snipe in a single night at a marshland site on the coast. The record was submitted and but turned down on the grounds you do not find jack snipe in such numbers. And this despite the fact that the birds were ringed and jack snipe take a different size ring to common snipe.

 

[Brian Stone]

Bizarre. Although I suppose there will be recorders about with limited experience. At one site in Cambs we recorded a max of 27 Jacks and double figures were expected there when the site was at its best. It's now sadly flooded. Incidentally, this is on topic as there was no permission to survey here. The land is for development and the owners wouldn't want anything stopping that.

BTW, if you didn't trespass on disused brickworks around here your birding would be severely curtailed. Not saying it's right, big, clever or anything but it's a fact.

 

[chris butterworth]

I suppose I have to admit to sneaking past the Turkish army in the 70's to get Red-wattled Lapwing very close to the Iraqi border. Getting caught was not a case of saying 'Oooops', more like 'Ow, that f*** hurt' many, many, many times before they realised we weren't Kurdish insurgents.

Chris

 

[Johann Sebastian Bach]

Tideliner,

Thanks for staying cool under fairly forensic questioning and explaining why your records need to go through a certain protocol. It's just possible that some of my earlier posts were inspired more by envy of you having had a long-staying nutcracker than by your stance on trespass. Apologies if I was a tad unrelenting with my questions.
I wonder how you and others in similar jobs would react if your employer decided to do something which would have a significant effect on a species about which little was known. I'm thinking of bulldozers surrounding an unreported bee eater colony or a red backed shrike's nest, where only you knew about the birds and the employer didn't care.

Peter

 

[Richard Klim]

I suppose I have to admit to sneaking past the Turkish army in the 70's to get Red-wattled Lapwing very close to the Iraqi border.

Yes, I have fond memories of that bird. On the way to Cizre, my wife and I were stopped at a Jandarma checkpoint alongside the Syrian border and ordered to go back, as the area was considered too dangerous for tourists due to ongoing PKK activity at that time. But after lots of blagging that we were serious ornithologists(!) and not 'tourists' (over several glasses of tea in the guardroom, of course), we were eventually allowed to proceed.

Near Cizre, we were ordered away from a couple of potential vantage points alongside the Tigris on the Iraq border road, but eventually managed to get acceptable views of the lapwings, taking care not to use our optics when army patrols were around. So, mission accomplished, we checked into the first hotel we could find in the ramshackle frontier town, where the staff seemed rather surprised that foreign tourists could possibly have a reason to visit Cizre. Half an hour later, we got a call asking us to come down to reception as we had some visitors - three plain-clothes policemen who 'interviewed' us for most of the evening (again accompanied by much tea). They were very polite but insisted that we leave the area immediately next morning (which was our plan anyway).

I understand that a much easier Turkish site for the species has since been discovered...

 

[Edward]

...or even at check-in before boarding an El Al flight to Israel. To convince my interrogator that I was a bona fide birder, I had to go through my field guide and describe which birds I expected to see at the major sites I planned to visit.

I got pretty much the same thing landing in Minneapolis a couple of years ago. The immigration officer said flat out that there were no birds in Minnesota so why should she believe me that I was coming to the US to go birding. I had to name a few things to convince her.

 

[GMK]

I suppose I have to admit to sneaking past the Turkish army in the 70's to get Red-wattled Lapwing very close to the Iraqi border. Getting caught was not a case of saying 'Oooops', more like 'Ow, that f*** hurt' many, many, many times before they realised we weren't Kurdish insurgents.

Chris

Might one ask when in the 1970s. The species was rather famously only publicly discovered at Cizre when Rod Martins, Craig Robson and Chris Murphy found it there in June 1983. To my knowledge, no one has ever claimed to have seen it there before then. I'm not doubting you, because the species obviously didn't suddenly appear at Cizre in the early 1980s, but if it was present prior to this, it would be good to have more details (you can leave out the bits about what the Turkish army did to you; I don't need to know, and all for a common Vanellus too...!)

 

[Tideliner]

Johann , in the case of a bird survey to determine the species present and usage of a site for development the information held by the developer has to be presented to the county council planning officer and the revelvent conservation body \ bodies ( EN , DEFRA, RSPB or local conservation Trust). The report when presented to the planning committee has have my approval to show it’s a true factual account of what was found. At the end of every report there will be a discussion section where I can put my opinion of the survey findings. All the points raised must be justified and the importance of species accessed in a national and international context.

To give an example if a single rare bird turned up it might not carry much weight in the final assessment of the site if it was likely to be a chance visit , unlikely to be repeated. On the other hand if the site holds sufficient numbers of a common species it is likely the common species will carry more importance in the report. There will be key species that are likely to carry more importance in the report . In the case of a proposed wind farm site raptors , waders and wildfowl are scored highly and singled out for specific work because they are considered a high risk group. In a wind farm survey the key species are not just counted , but also their flight paths , height , duration and behaviour are mapped. Passerines are on the whole are considered to be a low risk group and in most cases have a low score , though there may be exceptions.

If the survey officer gets caught slanting the report towards the development company or visa versa then he will not get much work in the future. His work is and must be independent. As for the possibility of a developer bulldozing a bee eater colony in my case this would be instantly reported to NE and in this day and age it would be unlikely the developer would get the planning clearance he needs to continue.

 

[chris butterworth]

Might one ask when in the 1970s.

It was in 1978, c 15 km to the east of a place called Ovakoy ( east of Cizre ). We had heard that they MIGHT be around there so, being young and foolish ( suicidal, more like ) off we shot. Not only were we in a restricted area but we were both in posession of PKK 'passports' picked up from the London office :eek!: so a sound thrashing was getting off lightly really.

(you can leave out the bits about what the Turkish army did to you; I don't need to know,

Spoilsport :-C. I was hoping to turn at least a couple of BFers off their dinner

.. and all for a common Vanellus too...!)

Ahhh, but it was a Western Palearctic tick. That makes all the difference. :-O

Chris

p.s. We did manage to get 2 birds just before the defenders of truth and freedom came barreling over the hill.

C

 

[Jos Stratford]

But after lots of blagging that we were serious ornithologists(!) and not 'tourists' (over several glasses of tea in the guardroom, of course), we were eventually allowed to proceed.
.

I also got held in a cell over night at Birecek during a period when the PKK conflict had escalated and tourists were advised against travel. Not so much an arrest, but more concern that I was arriving late at night and would end up kidnapped - was supplied with an endless supply of tea and jam sandwiches. Released next morning, had a day's birding, then ran into events that had potential to be rather bad, so took advice and fled the town in the middle of the night (flanked by a police patrol to the main road, then flagged down a truck to take me off into the night). Despite ending up in some dodgy dives, this is the only time ever I have had to run away from somewhere.