‘The birding community’ hates birds: Pishing and Tape-Luring - Part 2

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on January 28, 2010

Energy cost, increased conspecific and intraspecific confrontations and interactions, and disruption of normal activity.  These mean one thing: forced stress and aggression.  That represents the combined general impact on individual birds when they respond to pishing or tape-luring.  Any call used to bring birds out of hiding must elicit the same natural responses that would coincide with the call were it issued by another bird.  For example, alarm calls must produce stress and aggression along with the correlative hormones that define those states.  A challenger call would likewise produce the same physiological response.  In truth, any call utilized must produce a physiological response in every bird that hears it regardless of whether or not they respond to it in person, and those who do respond to it must likewise take part in a compulsory meeting with other birds who respond.  That is a meeting we can scarcely predict or control.  Also, birds reacting to the calls must expend energy and must stop engaging in natural behavior in order to respond.  So let us then turn to the existing science with hope of understanding how these practices can produce, in Professor Daniel J. Mennill’s words, “longlasting and far-reaching effects on individual fitness.”

‘The birding community’ hates birds: Pishing and Tape-Luring - Part 1

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on January 21, 2010

In Fiji’s Pacific Harbor, tourists hold their noses as dive boats pour hundreds of pounds of discarded fish scraps into the ocean.  This “chumming the water” as it’s called brings in sea life from miles around, including various kinds of sharks.  And sharks are precisely what the tourists have paid to see.  Yet biologists the world over state time and again that this constant activity will no doubt have an impact on normal shark behavior, and that the conditioning will lead the sharks and other wildlife into a downward spiral of abnormal activity.  But one thing the tourists pay for is results, and unloading all that smelly refuse into the tank definitely brings in the sharks.

But was has this to do with birds?  That answer rests in two activities: pishing and tape-luring.  Together or apart, they represent the birding community’s equivalent of chumming the water.

‘The birding community’ hates birds: Introduction

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on January 11, 2010

In 2009 I made a dedicated effort to participate actively in “the birding community.”  This is something I had not done before.  Though I am one of the most successful birders in Texas—by statistics alone, I saw and photographed more than 430 species in 2009, a number that easily ranks as the second-best birder in the state—I had never before opted to report my sightings, to send rare bird alerts to those who might be interested, or to seek out and participate in local, statewide, national and international forums and groups.

Reward Offered for OHV Vandals Who Trashed Meadow

By Chris Clarke | Posted on July 15, 2009

A press release from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER):

Sacramento - Conservationists are offering a reward for information leading to the identification and conviction of dirt bikers who damaged a beautiful mountain meadow that is vital habitat for the Yosemite toad, a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act.  The damage also compromises an expensive and important five-year research study. 

“There is not recreation; this is inexcusable vandalism,” said Karen Schambach, California Coordinator for PEER.  “The perpetrators need to be held accountable, and the message needs to get out that this kind of activity will not be tolerated.”

The Observer Effect

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on June 2, 2009

When I began studying physics in high school, the term “observer effect” intrigued me.  It applies to all observational methods, and although quantum mechanics was in its infancy at the time, it soon would put a whole new spin on the premise by showing the observer effect remained valid for all observers—even those who weren’t aware they were observing anything (e.g. an electron can cause the observer effect just as easily as a human can).

What the observer effect helps us understand is that the act of observing a phenomenon changes the state of that phenomenon, even if only a small bit.  Consider this: When you take a baby’s temperature, the thermometer must draw heat from the infant’s body in order to measure it, therefore the child’s temperature is changed by the act of observing it.

Through the Lens: You Might Never See It Again

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on May 29, 2009

Lost. I get lost sometimes. Not that it bothers me. Many times I intentionally lead myself astray so I can wander the unseen, the unexplored, the oft forgotten. When it becomes important I will find my way home. Eventually.

Only this time my adventure into nowhere stemmed from a series of wrong turns, not a sense of “let’s see what’s out there…”

Wolves and bears and Obama. Oh my!

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on May 9, 2009

I thought the days of Big Business running our environmental policy had ended. I thought we faced a new era of stewardship and responsibility. I thought Obama would bring sensitivity and common sense to how we deal with the world’s woes.

I was wrong.

Of monarchs, migrations and milkweeds

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on April 23, 2009

The most profound insect migration on the planet takes place east of the Rocky Mountains. However, climate change and deforestation act in concert not only to halt this endless flight, but to destroy the species responsible for the splendor that is the monarch butterfly migration. But you can help.

(Expanded from a few items I’ve posted at my blog over the last several months.)