Hey people,

With all this talk about not knowing how harmful stressing a bird can be I
thought I should show some of the articles/ studies that address this. As of
2001 no studies have been done on tapes and stressing birds but stressing a
bird does have measurable negative effects. Small birds are eating
constantly because of high energy needs, preoccupying them with calls etc.
takes away foraging time, (not to mention incubation and establishing
/protecting territory) and causes stress. Stress alone can kill a bird, as
banders know.

"A review of 27 studies on the effects of wildlife observation and
photography on birds reported negative effects on birds in 19 of the studies
(Boyle & Samson 1985), even though most of these may be due to photography
rather than birdwatching (Klein 1993; Tershy et al. 1997)."


"The majority of the birds studied were most sensitive to disturbance during
the breeding period (G?tmark 1992; Knight & Cole 1995). Human presence
around bird nests increased nest abandonment and egg loss due to nest preda-
tors (HaySmith & Hunt 1995; Hanson 2000), so birdwatching activity should be
minimized around nests and young, especially around nesting colonies, which
can be deserted as the consequence of the disturbance induced by just one
person (Larson 1995)."


"Even outside the breeding period, birdwatchers should minimize flushing of
birds, since this has high physiological costs for many species (Gabrielsen
& Smith 1995) and can be fatal to birds during times of food shortage
(Knight & Cole 1995)."


"Many birdwatchers play calls of secretive species to lure them out of their
hiding places and, during the breeding period, this may stress birds, as
well as leave nests exposed to predators. There have been no studies on the
effects of tapes on birds and this should be a research priority of bird
disturbance researchers."


http://www.stanford.edu/~cagan/SekerciogluOrniTourismEnvCons2002.pdf


Eric Cannizzaro

Evergreen State College




On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:28 AM, Rob Sandelin <nwnature1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> If I use an artificial call to lure a bird out so I can see it or
> photograph it, what harm does it do the bird? This is an unanwerable
> question. The assumption is: If only I do this a little its not a problem.
> And maybe if only one person every day, just did this once, maybe the impact
> is minimal. But what if you are not the only person that day? In heavy
> travelled areas there can be hundreds of birders in a day. Is it the 4th
> time, the 9th time, the 27th time the bird has been called out? You can't
> know that. And if you have the right to do this, so does the next person.
> Maybe your ethics are such you only play the song a couple times then stop.
> But the next person plays it constantly. I would be surprised if there is
> any substantial data on the affect of bird luring. So, like many
> activities, we just don't know the impact of this on the birds and probably
> never will. We know for sure that NOT luring birds out with artificial
> calls does not hurt them. Given how much of the natural world humankind is
> destroying, seems a no brainer to me to leave the birding to chance. If you
> see it, you see it, and if the bird does not reveal itself to you on that
> trip, let it live its life undisturbed.
>
> Rob Sandelin
> Naturalist, Writer, Teacher
> Snohomish
>
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