So, if you love birds you should let them be birds, in the wild, fliying free (again, doesn’t mean that if you already have a wild bird as a pet you should release him, because he’s already a domestic bird, maybe wouldn’t know how to survive in the wild and turn into a plague as many species have in several cities).
As I mention a couple of days ago about Bird Lovers, for me the most respectful ones are Ornitologists, because they’ve chosen birds as a carreer and a lifestyle, not only they look for them in their spare time, but they spend lots of time trying to understand them better.
So, a couple of years ago, when I started guiding around Tambopata, a big question came to me and I still quite don’t get 100% why this happens… Because if you love so much somebody or someone, you don’t want to hurt him/her, right? So…why bird banding???
I’m not a rebel that cuts the mist nets just for let you know, but the first time I saw this I was shocked! it completely blew my mind because not only the nets where all over the trails -we had to pass close to spiky trees and one of the turists almost got bitten by a bullet ant- but at the end we found a really sad scene: a reddish hermit was completely trapped in the net and unfurtunately when we found him he was already dead :(
Since that very moment, I just couldn’t stand any net, that picture stayed in my mind until now.
A couple of weeks ago, was the only time I exploted and in a really embarasing way. Of course later I appologise with now my new British friend. The argument started because he organizes Photography Workshops in my favorite lodge, one of the richest in biodiversity. I was checking the pictures, completely amazing by the way, but after seing so much beauty I found 3 or 4 pictures of some guy catching manakins…
Fiery-capped Manakin (Machaeropterus pyrocephalus)
Band-tailed Manakin (Pipra fasciicauda)
I couldn’t understand why if you can get such amazing WILDlife pictures, you need to do that? For studying issues, mist nets are considered one of the best tools for bird research, but why taking pictures like this?? And anyway, are mist nets the only tool that you could use for this type of research?? We’re in the 21st century and still using this methods (it has been used since 1899, the first using it was Hans Christian Cornelius Mortensen).
Someone told me I was being too hard at them, again I apologyse, part of that anger came because ignorance, but I was doing some research by my own and they’re quite a constroversial method already.
At first I found a post in Birdingblogs.com from Rebecca Nason called Bird Ringing – how safe are mist nets?, and found this:
FREQUENTLY CAPTURED BIRDS FOUND TO BE AT LESS RISK OF INJURY COMPARED TO BIRDS CAPTURED ONCE.
Capturing birds using mist nets to study behaviour, movement or the demographics of a species is one of the most common research techniques in ornithology, yet until now there have been no large scale studies into the risks mist nets pose to birds. Writing in the British Ecological Societys Methods in Ecology and Evolution researchers from California used a
dataset of over 345,000 records to evaluate the risks of mist netting.The research, led by Erica Spotswood from the University of California at Berkeley, used data from organisations across the United States and Canada to assess the risk factors which could increase rates of injury or mortality including bird size, age, frequency of capture and the role of predators.
The results revealed that birds are rarely injured or killed by mist nets. Of 620,997 captures the percentage of incidents of injury amounting to 0.59% while only 0.23% of captures resulted in mortality. The authors then began to analyse risk factors which could lead to increased incidents.
I’m highlithing the ‘only’ because if my maths are correct these means that already for that study 1428 birds died…is it right?? If it is, are we still talking about conservation??
A volunteer from that crew reply to my comment saying “I agree with ****, knowing for preserving”…what else should you study?? how many birds should die for you to know more about them??
Maybe another comment I read, about my last post, was also right… you’re “writing with emotion rather than thought”…well sorry if I’m too emotional but it’s actually a big concern of mine.
Where I live, it’s supossed to be The capital of Biodiversity in the second most diverse country on Earth, bird talking, so…do you think is okay to see not only loggers and gold seekers destroying the forest but also watching foreigners disturbing the wildlife here for ‘research purpose’?? Maybe I’m going to both extremes but it does’t feel good.
I think also for avoiding this type of issues, the research result should be exposed to the locals so they, including myself, could understand better what are they doing and support them if necessary. Many local people around where they’ve being doing this type of studies are against them because they don’t know exactly what they do and why, they just see how they cut new trails and take animals and do many things with them.
At the end, as any scientific method, there will always exists advantages and disadvantages, as with everything, but in this particular case is always good to show the product of the research as lifes are involved.
If you want to look up for more points of view you can check this two others posts:
