[NatureNS] Great Horned Owl - playback disruption

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From: Bev Wigney <bkwigney@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 15:12:04 -0300
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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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