Popped down to Boulmer yesterday morning for a few hours, but before that I must have a comment.
If any readers followed the threads on Twitter last week, about the furore surrounding the flushing of a Lanceolated Warbler and a Pechora Pipit on Shetland by birders, you may have seen some of the comments made by people with pitchforks and burning torches demanding the head of such heinous criminals. The resulting twitcher bashing was very much like the flushing of the rare birds themselves with everyone and their dog jumping in to have a go.
Compare these incidents with things that occur daily to our birds. For example, on Saturday I stepped outside with the dog for her walk to a barrage of shotgun blasts lifting 2000 Pinkfeet to the skies as the gunmen drove them from farmers crops. Every bird in our village, from Wagtails to Woodpigeons was spooked off to the horizon. Then, yesterday at Boulmer this spaniel below absolutely hammered every square inch of shore and rock edges actively chasing wading birds for fun while its owner strolled off along the track. Above the dog you can see waders in the air unable to feed.
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| Springer having a right good time flushing waders.Owner not interested. |
I think this puts things into context a bit. What is worse, a lone bird lifted across a road or from an iris bed a few times or this? You can argue that both are unacceptable, but those single passerines could have flown half a mile to similar habitat and would never have been relocated. These waders had nowhere to land and the geese, well, how many injuries resulted?
My own little theory is that some twitcher bashing is linked more to jealousy than bird protection. Its getting more common and I have been sucked in too, when there have been pictures of Mr and Mrs and a labrador ignoring reserve signs and throwing a ball for the dog into the protected area.
One observer went to the Lancy twitch and was so disgusted, forked out for the next flight home! What the hell did he expect? He went to Shetland looking for rare birds. He could have seen news of said Lancy and thought sod that, I'm going the opposite way to find my own, but no, he joined the throng. Then bubbled on about it! Did he think there would be 4 people sitting quietly waiting for a bird that behaves like a vole, to emerge from the grass? Kind of naive. If he did maybe he wasn't ready for Shetland?
One person asked if there was a warden to stop this behaviour. Shetland is a massive county. Does your county have a warden to stop 50 birders watching a bird on a verge? In Northumberland we cant stop people blasting a thousand migrating wildfowl or a dog quartering the feeding areas of hundreds of waders let alone this.
I do think its time people maybe vented their spleen on more serious offences, like the Badger cull for example...where a protected much loved British native mammal is trapped then shot for nothing. Thousands of them. Or Fox Hunting. Its been illegal for years but a load of people on horse back with a pack of hounds systematically quarter the countryside. How much disturbance does that cause to wildlife? Or Fireworks? I could probably go on...
Back on your low-carbon local patch, you wander around in the mist and a little bird flits into the small bush in the dunes. Do you say, ahh, I'll go the opposite way in case I flush it? No, you go for a better look in case its a rarity, and it flushes again but its just a Robin. Oh well. Does that differ from the Lancy twitch because there weren't 50 birders watching? Probably not, the result is exactly the same, its just people hate the thought of frivolous twitchers.
Back to Boulmer. Yesterday we walked the shore from the car park around to Seaton Point and back. We had 20+ Rock Pipits and a few Pied and Grey Wagtails but not much else. As we walked, we pushed them along the beach allowing a count... see what we did there. Maybe we should have just stayed at home? More seriously, I hope we can all demonstrate some moderation in our birding and consider the birds welfare for sure, but lets keep it real?
As the tide began to come in there were 20+ Bar tailed Godwits, 3 Grey Plover, 10+ Sanderling, 30+ Dunlin, 22+ Ringed Plover, 20+ Turnstone. A Sandwich tern flew S and 2 Red throated Divers moved N.
Along at the north end of the village about 3,000 Golden Plovers avoided the spaniel and a Swallow went S. A couple of Chiffchaffs and 7 Stonechats plus 30 Skylarks were about the only other things of note on a busy morning for visitors on the site.
7 comments:
I missed both going to Shetland and much of the resultant Twitter debacle as I was away elsewhere, but you talk a lot of sense in this post.
What I would say is that I have been going to Shetland on and off since 2010 and I do find the crowds (from the photos I saw, not sure which bird) to be unsettlingly enormous versus what it used to be, and quite offputting actually. I much prefer birding abroad precisely because you see the same birds by yourself that draw huge numbers here. No agro, no drama.
I flush house sparrows every time I open my back door, but that's about it!
I'm with you. There is so much going on that is impacting on wildlife, that a spat on a social media account is the least of their worries. I try and remain positive but these days it's hard to keep so. Not just in the UK. I've recently watched Simon Reeves America's series, from the Arctic to the tip of Chile absolute chaos, and nature is in the this of it for "getting in the way".
Hi Stuart - good points, well made!
Cheers,
Col
Thanks all.
Jonathan, yes I agree there are more crowds now, but if thats not to a persons taste, fine, you can go elsewhere even on Shetland. Its a big place. Its no good going and adding to the crowd then complaining about it? I just dont get it.
Simon, of course, dont we all. Then there are cats. They do more than flush our birds but I wonder how many in the queue on Shetland keep one?
Andrew, Indeed, its a sad state of affairs.
Col, Ta...
I totally agree with every point you raise in your post...
REcently I got up early and drove the short distance to Horsey to look for/see the previous day's Rustic Bunting. When I was nearly there I could see a frustrated crowd on athe narrow path and decided it wasn't my cup of tea: I just walked back to Horsey Gap and enjoyed looking at some common wildlife on my own.
Yes thats right David, we can all make a decision on how we enjoy our hobby. One mans meat is another mans poison...
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