Ted Kenefick posted his reposonses about his feelings and reactions in
posting about seeing a Boreal Owl. When a rare or highly sought after bird
is reported on this list it has both a positive and negative effect. The
negative effect obviously comes from the numbers of people who flock to an
area to see the bird, causing potential problems by their numbers and how
they approach the bird, and the area it is in. There are numerous stories of
people acting very responsibily, and some stories of birders who act in ways
that diminish not only other peoples ability to view the bird in question,
but may also diminish non-birders welcome of such things, especially when
the bird in question is on, or adjacent to private property.

The postive side is that our collective knowledge about birds is increased
with each post. Since I am not a lister, and do not chase after rare birds
and do not personally go out with the twitcher crowds, I can only use this
forum to ask all of you that do to be mindful of our collective impacts on
both the animals and their habitats. There are people in the birding
community who I have enormous respect and admiration for and I trust us all
to be leaders in guiding those who need reminders of our impact.

I encourage those in this community to keep the posts coming about what they
see, and to use your good judgement about how you report the locations of
sensitive birds, or birds in sensitive areas. I do believe we all care about
birds, some of us passionately, and let us use that caring as our guide.


Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, writer

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