In response to Macklin Smith's comment about potential problems with
leading bird tours to nesting localities, I have no doubt he is correct.
There is lots of evidence to show that ravens, jaegers, arctic foxes and
other animals clue in on nest sites discovered or disturbed by humans. And
all it takes is one researcher, much less a tour group of 15 people.

My (practical) response to this has been to think of a tiny proportion of
the population of some less common birds (for example, those couple of
nesting areas of bristle-thighed curlews accessible along the Kougarok Rd.
north of Nome) as "expendable," that is that birders and bird tours should
not be discouraged from seeking them out AT THAT LOCALITY. If the very
people who admire them are responsible for their demise, then so be it. A
feedback system is built in, and perhaps a couple of years of no or low
birding pressure will allow the population to build back up. I think Bob
Gill and others who are monitoring these birds have probably come to
similar conclusions--a few territories are sacrificial to the birding
community, but the line has to be drawn. No one's list takes precedence
over the security of a bird population. I think there should be great
resistance to allowing birders carte blanche on pursuing the "edge" of this
population as it recedes (remember, these curlews breed over a wide area,
most of them far from the nearest roads). Of course, you'd have to be an
idiot to pursue the edge of the bristle-thighed curlew population; I went
on an 8-mile hike across that horrendous tussock tundra just this July
looking for that fabled bird--both at Coffee Dome and past the bridge at
the end of the road--and didn't find one. I assume this was the declined
population that Macklin wrote about (although the species was seen in both
localities a few days before I visited). So I personally was affected by
this, as well as the curlew populations! Rather than cursing jaegers *or*
birders, I just concluded "just my luck, I'll have to go to the South Seas
now."

On the other hand, to my knowledge large shorebirds usually drive jaegers
from their territories with great success. I have seen this interaction
again and again with whimbrels, black-bellied plovers and others. Is there
indeed evidence that jaegers take the eggs of these birds, even if they do
determine the location of the nest?

Dennis Paulson