This morning I made a late decision to go back to Coughton Wood. At the end of March it was teeming with Siskins and Redpolls, and the habitat looked pretty interesting.
In the end I did see a party of eight Redpolls which flew over, and it's tempting to say they could be breeding there. But can I even say that? The rules of what you can blog about are unwritten, as far as I am aware, and I am unclear about what I can and cannot say.
Even in the pre-social media days it was a bit of a minefield. Suppression was frowned on, and you could soon find yourself in other birder's bad books, particularly if you were quite happy to twitch other people's finds.
But the whereabouts of breeding Goshawks, Hobbies and suchlike were kept under wraps. You generally got to hear about them with the proviso "don't tell anyone, and don't tell anyone I told you". Fair enough I suppose, it was generally understood that egg collecting was rife. How bad would you feel if your careless slip led to eggs being robbed.
Nowadays the issue is the speed news gets broadcast. Tweets are sent and news of birds reach many ears within minutes. Blog posts are slower, but it's the same problem.
So let's take these Redpolls. They are scarce breeders around here, but not over much of the country. Surely any egg-collector worth his salt is not going to be tapping into blogs, or even tweets, to find out where they are. Would he even be interested? How many active eggers are there anyway? I suspect there are very few.
Anyway, while its still fairly obvious that if you find a rare breeding raptor you should keep it to yourself, what about other species? Turtle Dove, Woodlark, and Nightingale for example. If I found one of them should I keep it off the blog?
How rare does a bird have to be? I have noted three Cetti's Warblers locally this spring, but can I say where they are? They're on the increase and so not threatened. The WMBC Report now mentions sites, although the publication is about two years behind the event.
I think it would be useful to have some Internet Guidelines about what can be said. It may be out there, but I haven't seen it.
You can probably guess I've had a pretty dull day. Three Willow Warblers were singing in Coughton Wood, and I photographed one at Mappleborough Green Flash.
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| Willow Warbler |
A Common Sandpiper GWJ had seen yesterday evening had gone, and I was left to claim a fly-over House Martin as my bird of the day.
Hi Richard. Certainly a bit of a grey area with regards to scarce / sensitive breeding species.
ReplyDeleteI keep info off social media (i.e. twitter, which is all I use) if a schedule 1 breeding species (or one that should be treated as such), but I will always submit a record and have a few trusted birders I share such information with. Down to your own personal judgement to decide who such people are. In relation to your blog, I personally would probably suggest that you do post if you find a turtle dove, woodlark etc, with the proviso that you don’t say where (as vague as possible, e.g. ‘in my 10km circle’) and do not give up where if asked by those who’s trust cannot be guaranteed. I fear for irresponsible disturbance by birders / photographers (e.g. tape lure, encroachment) more so than the risk of egg collectors (raptors aside in some cases I guess). That’s my thoughts anyway. I certainly would not fret about mentioning sites where redpoll may breed. I don’t exactly think there will be egg collectors after this species, and surly not a species worth pestering irresponsibly if a birder / photographer!
Cheers Josh, I think your reply exactly matches my own thoughts on the subject. I picked Lesser Redpoll as a pretty non-controversial subject, but as you say there are grey areas. Drawing the line at Schedule 1 species seems to be the way to go.
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