This is a good point to note. I have been at a fairly out of the way spot in
the south of the ACT and stopped just inside a gate for quite a while
watching and counting the ducks on a farm dam during the ACT Bird Atlas
project about ten years ago. About an hour later, I had police on my tail,
as someone was worried, I thought I was discretely away from the house and
not a bother. The police took a bit of convincing as to what I was doing and
I asked them to pass on my apology. It seems there had been trouble with
people shooting at horses and signs etc there recently. It must have been a
50km round trip for the police.
In the early 1980s, I used to bird survey with Graham Leach around Marburg,
Laidley etc (west of Brisbane). We used to regularly stop on the road
outside the property, near the gate in view of a nice farm dam, (at about
the same time on Sunday mornings as Graham followed a regular route). One
time there was two Australian Hobbies zooming around a large tree and I went
through the gate to see if maybe they were nesting. Someone came out and
enquired what were doing. When Graham told them they said they had noticed
him (or us) several times before and had concluded that we must be "URANIUM
PROSPECTORS"!
-----Original Message-----
From: <>
To: <>
Date: Wednesday, 15 July 1998 15:20
Subject: birding on private property
I couldn't agree more with David Geering's comments on obtaining
permission to enter private property when birding. Several times I
have been abused by landowners for walking past their property when I
have been on a road or in adjacent public land, and it is usually
because they see the binoculars around my neck and assume I am one of
'those' birdos who walk all over private land without permission.
Obviously the majority of birdos don't, but it just takes a few to
give us a bad name! So please be careful, for everyone's sake.
Lainie Berry
Department of Biological Sciences, Monash University
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