[NatureNS] Great Horned Owl - playback disruption

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From: "John Kearney" <j.f.kearney@gmail.com>
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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 15:25:50 -0400
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Hi Fred, Bev, and all,
For me, there are two issues about playback and other kinds of interventions in the life of birds and wildlife in general. The first is how the intervention affects the health and well-being of the bird. The second is related to the equality of being. It is an extension of "do to others as you would have them do to you" to the natural world. It is an ethic of deep respect and celebration of the consciousness of all life. It is an ethic for which we are not culturally well-equipped, but I believe the pursuit of this ethic offers hope for the restoration of our planet.
John

-----Original Message-----
From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca On Behalf Of Bev Wigney
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2020 14:12
To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca
Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Great Horned Owl - playback disruption

On the topic of playback recordings.  Here's something anecdotal, but that leads me to suspect that they could have a fairly negative effect on birds - at least those of some species.

Several years ago, I bought a bird app for my iPad.  It was winter and I was down in Arizona at the house that I used to rent up on the mountainside above Bisbee.  There was a lot of bird activity around my place as it had gardens and trees.  Anyhow, just after I got the app, a friend from town visited and wanted to see how the app worked.  We were sitting out on the patio which was surrounded by pines and a Chinaberry tree.  He asked me to show him the Phainopepla info, so we were looking at that.  I'd never actually seen a Phainopepla in the garden although I'd seen them out in the mesquite in other locations.
We played the audio recording of its song a couple of times just so that he could see how the app worked.  In less than a minute, a male Phainopepla appeared amd perched in the Chinaberry tree less than a couple of metres above our heads.  It was a bit of a shocker to see how quickly a couple of short bursts of sound had summoned a bird -- sort of like rubbing a lamp to produce a genie.  That was scary enough, but it gets worse.  For about a week, the bird hung around the patio, calling and calling and moving back and forth from the Chinaberry to the Pines.  It was a real "Eeek!!" moment for me.  I would never use the audio in one of those apps in an attempt to attract a bird.

bev


On 2/13/20, Frederick W. Schueler <bckcdb@istar.ca> wrote:
> On 2/12/2020 2:26 PM, John Kearney wrote:
>
>> There are many views about the use of playback during the breeding 
>> season (and during migration as well). It is strictly prohibited, 
>> including pishing, in the North American Breeding Bird Survey, while 
>> it is an integral component of other survey methods such as nocturnal 
>> owl monitoring routes.
>
> * are there studies of whether a few episodes of playback in a 
> breeding season harm Owls or other Birds? (there are studies that show 
> that toe-clipping does increase mortality among Amphibians). It seems 
> to me that breeding pairs are in constant territorial interchanges, so 
> that a few episodes of playback would be unlikely to be particularly 
> stressful, and the fact that the playback is 'defeated' and goes away 
> might even encourage the pair.
>
> fred.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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