Feeding and Trapping for Art...

[casil403]

I don't think I will be feeding any more birds or wildlife after seeing this video. It is in French but it still impacted me and made me feel rather icky after seeing it....doesn't seem right. Then I realized that holding out my hand with seed for chickadees is really no different and I feel a bit guilty/bad about that. :o
Again it is in French and it is fairly long (15 minutes) but it sure hit home for me....wow.
Épisode 26 : Nourrir et piéger pour l'art - Saison 2009 - La semaine verte - TOU.TV (http://www.tou.tv/la-semaine-verte/S2009E26)

[casil403]

Here's a summary of the video in English....as taken from another website
NatureScapes.Net • View topic - Film about baiting owls (http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=173903)

Nothing much new on this ongoing debate. They were reporting the current problem that is occurring in regions of the province of Québec.

They are finding that there are photographers that are organising workshops and supplying live mice to attract the owls. It was not uncommon for the group(s) to pursue the owls as they moved. Some people would even get to the point of having the mice on the snow and as the owl would approach, some would clap their hands to scare the owl so that photographers would get the photos of full wing span. They would do this 2-3 times until they would let the owl get the mice. Sometimes they would feed 10's of mice!

They had a pet shop owner being interviewed and she was saying that her business turnover would dramatically increase in Jan/Feb due to photographers buying mice to bait owls. She even had one women one day get 24 mice and had to come back the next morning to get another dozen.

The vet was very concerned with the whole situation. He had to amputate the wing of one owl as it got hit by a car. Another one was shot at with shotgun. He blames events like this to baiting as this gets the owls to associate humans and food and they then lose their normal fear of humans. The owls see a car and then will actually get close to the road to wait and see if mice will be offered. Shooting of the owls is illegal but you get poachers and the owls that have been baited have a lot less fear of humans, so they get too close.

There is also another problem for photographers that don't use baiting, they get put in the same "group" as the others so they get a bad name just by being there. So ornithologists don't trust the ethical photographer, all photographers are "enemies" to the owls.

With the uptake of digital photography, more effort needs to be spent on education and teaching of ethics. The vet was saying that there could be some places where baiting could be acceptable, eg research, but to bait just for a few photographers to get THE image, that is just not on.

The reporters even went back 10 years ago and found in their archives some footage where they had used baiting where they were doing a program on the owls. These days, those practices are just not on anymore.

That probably give a quick summary.

[ericmark]

Thank you for translation I watched with cat on my lap who bit me as she watched so even affected her.

I am uncertain as to the feeding making owls trust humans. On the Falklands the birds had no or little contact with humans and in general we could get a lot closer than normal seems they don't have natural fear of humans.

I suppose if we should not encourage birds then I need to remove my bird table and all my bird feeders yet all the news programs tell us how unless we feed the birds we may lose some of the song birds at least.

In the UK many of our birds of pray rely on road kill and are seen regularly at the sides of roads and of course there is a likely hood that they themselves become road kill as well but on the whole it seems to work for the birds of pray as their numbers are increasing.