The tone of some of the messages on this thread intrigues me: several
people have written in with a presumption that they are somehow entitled
to the information on the location of rare and sensitive species, as
though their "right" to tick the bird off their life list trumps the
species' claim to survival. A less recent posting on the topic of tapes
noted that one of the rare eastern warblers had abandoned nesting in
certain locales because birders with tapes had driven the males into
silence. Can such actions be justified on the ground that seeing the bird
somehow makes the viewer more likely to protect the habitat?

As in most such situations, the propriety of informing other of the
location of a individual dep[ends upon the species ability to tolerate
human presence. A wintering snowy owl is a very different matter than a
territorial warbler.

Dale Goble
Moscow