>Could Ted and Michael please take it outside?

No.

You see, that's the problem with North American birders: when it arises,
it's mis-labelled as a personal-opinion issue.

It is emphatically not a personal issue. Bad birder/photographer behavior
has been a problem for wildlife at least as big as the ballooning
off-leash-dog problem for as long as I've been birding, some, dear god,
five decades. The Brits and the Europeans have addressed this problem for
at least the last twenty years and their organisations have well-developed
protocols in place to prevent bad birder/bad photographer behavior, and the
birders and photographers there mainly follow the rules.

No such rules here. Why do North Americans have nothing similar in place
which prevents harassment of birds? This is such an incredible no-brainer, I
cannot fathom why North American birding organisations at any level are
apparently powerless to stop bad birder/bad photographer behavior. Is it
simple lack of similar courage to confront this issue at the organisational
level? Or, sadly, maybe it's never occurred to those who could actually do
something about this, that there is any need? Or just too busy chasing
rarities to think this one through? Might be time then to think about
thinking about this one, yeah?

>Thanks a bunch! I have birds to watch!!

Joe. Hope you don't find something so rare it's harassed out of the area as
some of the Great Gray owls here in Vancouver BC. I know of two which were
so badly harassed by photographers that they left the area and other birders
didn't get to see them. Or Snowy Owls out on the Boundary Bay foreshore
which were so pursued by a full-frame fanatic that a burly (British) member
of my field trip roared out that if this guy didn't stop flushing the owls
from the foreshore, he'd be wearing his 400mm lens as an anal suppository.
Thank God for the Brits. They know how to protect birds. Anyway, that
stopped this jackass. Simplest solutions may sometimes be best when
encountering bad photographer/nad birder behavior. In the Morth American
absence of the RSPB model, anything to get them house-trained when around
birds. So, good luck, Joe.

And keep in mind, that within in the term 'conservationist', lies the
concept of 'the protector'. "Birder' is recreational, therefore doesn't
include this.

Best wishes

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
loblollyboy at gmail.com

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