Hes East has pulled in some new waders today with 2 Greenshank now present. The 2 Wood Sandpiper were still present today too. I'll hopefully drop in tomorrow on my way back from the office.
Whilst there last night I had a look around with Tim, Ollie and Jack and was disturbed by some mindless idiots chasing the (flightless) ducklings about the place right through the area with breeding birds. These 'people' were not uni students, I doubt they could read or write to be honest - just mindless thugs. You probably can't however say they 'should know better', well I guess you could but these sort of people just don't know better. To them it is OK to do what they do, no one has probably told them not to do it and they haven't got the brain capacity to figure this out themselves. They should have been told, but probably haven't. You can't excuse such behaviour but in some circumstances you don't expect anything better. It just makes your blood boil.
Jump forward to today. Tim has been birding this site regularly and regularly turning up great locally scarce birds and many local birders have twitched his findings (me included) and behaved impeccably.
Some background:
Last week when Tim found the Wood Sands he had to tell some of the local birders to back off and view from a more sensible location (after they came piling in over the brow of a hill flushing the birds) - this was not greeted with much intelligent dialogue and Tim was publicly flogged by either one of the perpetrators or his mate. This was frankly bang out of order.
Today Tim was again birding the site (seeing 2x Greenshank found by Ollie) when he spotted this. I don't know the guy in the photo, but having been told who he is I'm horrified! This guy is meant to be a representative of the York Ornithologists Club. When told he shouldn't be stood where he was Edited his attitude was phenomenally arrogant, rude and basically said 'I don't care' with a few choice words directed at Tim (and other "young birders"). This is what I would have expected from the thugs present yesterday, not from someone who is meant to be a) a birder, b) a representative of YOC and c) an adult.
Tim mentioned in his post a few days ago about potentially not releasing bird news from the site (which was greeted with disgust from the guy mentioned above). Yet given this latest behaviour might not be a bad idea.
Last week at Wheldrake people twitching the Blue-winged Teal were found stood on the roof of Swantail hide, bang out in the open - surprise, surprise, no birds anywhere to be seen, not to mention the disturbance here to breeding birds... As a result of this behaviour from some people news will not be put out in the future in many circumstances.
This kind of behaviour really angers me and be assured if you are seen to be doing idiotic things you will be reported, whoever you are. Feel free to do the same to me when you see me stood in the middle of a breeding colony or stood atop a bird hide... .
A few weeks ago a guy was chastised heavily for walking into a field with breeding waders at Wheldrake, this was [according to him anyway] by accident. Not great, but understandable if he didn't know the area as professed (and he was eventually apologetic), however this latter case is clearly an 'I don't care' attitude and this should not be tolerated.
I applaud Tim for bringing this to our attention and hope that birders visiting this, and other sites show some respect for a) the birds and b) the people finding them.
Well said Andy. This sort of behaviour is bang out of order. I hope the YOU member is publicly named and shamed. At the very least his behaviour should be brought to the attention of his affiliates. Iv'e run out of words that can be safely published. As for the other, all you can do is call the police or local wildlife officer. Maybe take some pics for evidence. Arse
ReplyDeleteHey Andy
ReplyDeleteJust FYI, it's Hes East, not vice versa. Maybe a quick edit?
Ollie
PS The greenshank were all mine, Tim's found enough for this week :-)