Birdwatchers don't make a peep

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

Jobs

Autos

Homes

Rentals

NWsource

Getaways

March 13, 1997

Birdwatchers don't make a peep

By JANE HADLEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

A single, hastily composed message posted to the 500 subscribers on the Tweeters Internet e-mail list started it.

The message asked if, in fact, a great gray owl had been sighted in a state park near Kirkland.

If so, it would be the first time in 100 years that the owl was seen in King County.

But the e-mail message was greeted with a strange, resounding silence.

Welcome to the complicated world of modern birdwatching.

Hal Opperman, chairman of the Seattle Audubon Society Bird Records Committee, said the last great gray owl in King County was captured Nov. 19, 1897, near the mouth of the Duwamish River. That owl is in the University of Washington's Burke Museum.

As Tweeters subscribers waited for a response as to the great gray owl sighting at Bridle Trails Park, some of those who had seen the owl were debating whether to publicize it.

The concern, said Jim Erckmann, an ornithologist who lives next to the park, is that "so many people will come, it will disturb it so much it won't be able to feed. Or they could drive it away."

Two days after the e-mail message appeared, ornithologist Dennis Paulson, a friend of Erckmann, announced the sighting at a monthly meeting of the Washington Ornithological Society. The next day, the Tweeters list was buzzing with discussion of how and where to see the bird. The disclosure came about a month after the owl was first seen.

"It's very much situational ethics," Paulson said. "Some rare birds, there'd be no problem in releasing their location. But all of them have a potential problem, as there are more and more birders. In England, hundreds and hundreds of people come and trample gardens. It's like a soccer riot."

Paulson and Erckmann said, however, that the seeming tameness of the great gray owl of Bridle Trails Park and the difficulty of locating it reassured them. They doubted that any harm would come to the bird or the park from publicizing the owl's presence.

Three other great grays have been seen in Western Washington this winter, one each in Whatcom, Skagit and Snohomish counties. The locations of those three have not been disclosed. When a great gray appeared in Whatcom County in 1990, its location also was kept secret.

The great gray owl looks huge because of its puffy feathers. Its skull and feet are small and the bird is light, and it feeds mostly on small rodents such as voles and ground squirrels.

The great gray, a bird mainly of the northern Canada forests, dazzles many with its ability to hear the presence of a mouse underneath a layer of snow. The owl pounces unerringly feet first and comes up with its prey.

Erckmann said birder visits to Bridle Trails, an equestrian park, have picked up in the past week or two, but so far it hasn't gotten out of hand.

It was a different story last year, when a great gray was seen in a field in Skagit County. On Feb. 12, 1996, the sighting was publicized on Tweeters, an Internet web page which discusses wild birds in the Northwest.

"I watched the incredible rush of people up to this owl last year," said Bud Anderson, a Skagit County raptor expert who first saw the Skagit great gray. "People chasing it up and down the road with cameras. ... I think I learned my lesson. That was to keep it fairly quiet."

Anderson himself became the subject of controversy when he placed a radio pack on the owl to track its migration. Tweeters erupted into a debate on how the radio tag would affect the bird and whether it would produce useful scientific information.

Within the last few weeks, Tweeters has seen debate on the ethics of using the time-tested technique of locating owls by playing recordings of owl hoots. Critics question whether it stresses the owls just as they are trying to establish territories, find a mate and build a nest.

Anderson says the Internet's ability to transmit information instantly and globally is both a blessing and a curse. Paulson laments the undue focus of many birders on rarities and on competitive birding.

But Erckmann and Paulson also acknowledge the other side.

"I'm always of mixed feelings," Paulson said. "I found a Boreal owl on Mount Rainier a few years ago. I hesitated before I told people, it's such a fragile environment. I finally decided: Who am I to withhold this wonderful possibility from people?"