Ted,

>Splintering the group into factions is silly and childish.

I agree, but the factions were there, mostly incited by bad photographer
behavior, long before I arrived on the scene. So I decline your invitation
to be responsible for this.

>Us and them rhetoric will not serve the cause well. Listen to yourself,
this is the root of bigotry, stereotyping a group based on a subset of that
group and applying the stereotype to everyone.

I based my opinions on decades of observation and experience, not rhetoric
and presupposition. Were it my remit, some photographers I have witnessed
would be in jail for their crimes against birds they committed in pursuit of
the ideal shot. I'm not talking one or two, but tens and, occasionally,
usually involving owls, hundreds of photographers doing everything but
uprooting nearby trees for that perfect shot.

And I'm no longer taken in by the plaintive bleating that 'it's only one or
two bad apples.' It's far more widespread than that. And it is a problem the
photographic community needs to address.

In Britain, the RSPB has wardens to police birders and photographers at
twitch sites to prevent such obnoxious behavior. Maybe Canadian and American
local Audubons and local natural history societies should start examining
this precedent as a way to prevent harassment of the birds by birders and
photographers alike.

>Knock it off, really, knock it off. This is not sarcasm.

Not interested. Whoever harasses birds should be pursued and held
accountable. I don't care what group they belong to.

best wishes

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
loblollyboy at gmail.com

Every answer deepens the mystery.
- E.O. Wilson


On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Ted Ryan <coffeemonkey101 at comcast.net>wrote:

> Splintering the group into factions is silly and childish. Us and them
> rhetoric will not serve the cause well. Listen to yourself, this is the
> root of bigotry, stereotyping a group based on a subset of that group and
> applying the stereotype to everyone.
>
> Knock it off, really, knock it off. This is not sarcasm.
>
> Ted Ryan
> Fredrickson, WA
>
>
>
> On Apr 24, 2011, at 3:28 AM, Michael Price <loblollyboy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Perfect response Michael
> You lumped all photographers in a "group", and your "data" of 80% of
> unscrupulous photographers I'm sure is an accurate number from diligent
> note-taking. And lets not forget when people tell us how long they have been
> birding or leading tours....that makes their OPINION more valid. This is
> exactly why the discussion should be ended. Everyone has their opinion, and
> Michael is right, there are jerks with cameras out there. But the discussion
> goes nowhere except to vent personal feelings towards unscrupulous people.
> And those people could care less what they do.
> Nothing anyone has to say about this topic could possibly add any value,
> but go for it...because I know these type of silly discussions won't end.
> Jonah
>
> Well, Jonah---BTW, thanks for the gratuitous sarcasm, very classy on your
> part----when I was the hopefully conscientious operator of the of the
> Vancouver BC Bird Alert, a post from which I was summarily removed because I
> was too conscientious, I noticed a pattern of photographer-based abuse of
> the birds: flushed shorebirds, disrupted nesting birds, and disrupted owls.
> By photographers who needed a full-frame shot, not birders who were
> satisfied by a simple sighting. I then removed the exact sighting locations,
> not a popular decision---okay with most birders, but photographers like you
> hated it. So, Jonah... Oh, you know what those three little dots means, eh?
> Don't have to say them out loud, yeah? I mean, you have your pride, right?
> Okay, if you still don't get it, it's irony. It's even sarcasm. It means,
> according to your own wording, you're one of them, not us.
>
> Michael Price
> Vancouver BC Canada
> <loblollyboy at gmail.com>loblollyboy at gmail.com
>
> Every answer deepens the mystery.
> - E.O. Wilson
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20110425/65d646b7/attachment.htm