Re: Equipment

[Walter Knapp <>]

Barb asked me to forward this message to the group as she's having
arguments with Yahoo's new spam filter

Walt

Barb Wrote:

Sorry Walt I must disagree from personal observation.  I am certainly
have not caught the Bambi syndrome. I butterfly and take specimens for
scientists studying what we have part of a Bambi is in the freezer. I
also think that Bambi and his related species occupy far too much of too
many of our National Parks and should be dealt with. This is not based
on what I think the bird is thinking but how it acts.

When taped calls are used in a birds territory we frequently get a very
very unnatural sounding response of a very highly agitated bird.  Not
the usual response you get when a bird encroaches on the edge of the
territory. At the start when I was ignorant I used taped calls some and
was very unhappy with the results.  Yes I got the bird and a loud
recording but the only recordings which really sounded natural were
those taken quite a while after the tape harassment when the bird had
calmed down somewhat.

Personal observation of a Ovenbird which we stupidly called when we knew
no better taught me of the dangers. It was late in the season and we
wanted to tally the bird we were in a stupid contest with others to see
how many species we could find.   We knew from previous work that there
had been a bird calling in the aspen to the east of the car but had not
heard him on that day.  We blasted away - the bird immediately shot over
the road - landed on a dead sprig of a tree in a cow pasture to the west
of us and called in a very unnatural agitated song - exposing himself
far away from cover all the time.  We drove off and only came back by
about 15 minutes later - the bird was still agitated - and still on the
small twig of a tree in the cow pasture.  He was using energy and time
that at that point should have been spent feeding young. This bird would
not have gone into that open habitat to drive off another of his
species. You do not normally see these guys sitting up like that.  We
had caused the bird to expose himself in the unnatural habitat to which
he would not normally have ventured because we played the call.   At
least we learned from the lesson.

We have owls have been driven off because of repeated harassment with
taped calls.

People like to use taped calls because it gets the males into unnatural
open areas where they can be easily seen.  I have a problem with that.
But that being said I do not have a problem with taped calls where
necessary like nocturnal owl surveys as long as they are used prudently
and not repeatedly.

Barb Beck
Edmonton



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