[normhead]

Sorry everyone - there is myth and facts. Some of the ideas about handing out food is myth.
There has been some research done on feeding wildlife and most of it shows that harm is not measurable. I've worked in zoos and seen animals being fed a variety of foods. Actually for many birds, bread is a healthy addition.
What can't be distinguished is sick and injured birds actually who survive only because humans are offering food hand outs. So it is relatively common to see such birds looking for handouts.

Where handing out regular food is an issue because it attracts the least desirable animals including rats and mice and what ever feral birds live in the location.

For those who want to panic about a few small morsels being put out, some urban birds (where I live as an example its feral turtle doves) get 50% of their diet from pet food being left outside. We are talking about tons of food each day.

Having said all of that in my film days my longest lens was 200mm. My advice is to look at the birds' behavious and then position yourself. In time you will get your photo (maybe)

From an ethical point of view disturbing nests and nesting and roosting birds is the biggest issue.

Like Bob, when I first became aware of these issues I looked for research on a number of issues, one being bread is bad for birds.... I couldn't find any. There are a lot of people out there disseminating information that just isn't accurate.

And there is a huge amount of hypocrisy on this issue. People actually want to see pictures of un-habituated animals in natural settings. Well that's just nonsense. I spend 4 to 5 weeks in the bush looking every year in areas where animals live, and I don't see any wild animals from closer than 100 meters, and certainly none close enough to photograph. Almost 100% of the animals you see on line are habituated animals. I have a pack of wolves that live in the forest behind my house. IN 6 years we've seen members of the pack maybe 3 times, and usually from great distance. Animals that haven't been fed by humans don't let human get near them. So anytime you are seeing one of my pictures, even those taken deep in the bush, you are seeing images of animals that let me get close to them, because they know humans are harmless, or habituated animals.

Now I don't live out in the west with mountains so a long lens would be a ridiculous idea. There are very few places open enough to use one here. We have forest even on top of our ridges. So, 99% of our wildlife photos are taken along the Highway 60 corridor where animals are used to the noise of cars, or near the campgrounds where people they are poaching human food, whether by being fed or by raiding garbage. Now people will claim this is not natural. There are records of fox, ravens, racoons, possums and wolves hanging around the NA encampments in North Ameraca for thousands of years. The idea of leaving food out for nearby animals is built into North American native traditions. Native Americans, like us, enjoyed encounters with the animals we share the earth with, and the animals are always invited to rituals, and often baiting is part of the ritual. This idea that animals shouldn't be baited is the modern and untested concept.

If you take pictures of wildlife, you go to places where animals are habituated, or where someone is baiting them. If you don't do the baiting. Odds are you just turn up and take the pictures of animals that other have baited, how ethical is that? Ethically is that actually worse than doing the baiting yourself?

There are places where animals go to breed or feed, many people will visit those sites to take pictures. That is often stressful to the animals involved ... how ethical is that?
The simple fact is that many of the animals I photograph are being fed by humans... and some people just feed the animals no matter what you say. The animals usually don't complain. See the Pine Martens pulling garbage like garlic bread out of the bins near the local park, why am I the bad guy if I bring them some food that's actually healthy for them?

I'm not saying you can go around indiscriminately feeding the wildlife. But I am saying that a lot of people are just spouting "new agey" type BS, that makes sense to them, "like don't feed the birds bread", because it sounds like good old folksy common sense. And god knows those stupid birds will just gobble down that poison bread cause they are so stupid they don't know what's good for them. People seem to just make up and disseminate this stuff. And it doesn't make you a nature lover because you follow it. It makes you a sheep in the "we are the true nature lovers" herd.

There simply are no shortcuts. At the end of the day, you have to understand the animals you shoot and do what's appropriate for the situation.

Last year at a put in for a canoe trip...there were ducks. There was small Tiimmy's bun sitting on the dash of my car someone hadn't finished with their lunch. I went back to the truck and got it and was about to feed it to the ducklings, when one of my buddy's ran over yelling don't feed the ducks it's bad for them. So I looked it up on line when I got home. Not one scientific study that says bread is bad for ducks. One biologist who said "The majority of a ducks food shouldn't be bread." He didn't say it was science, it was opinion. But at least a biologists opinion. I've also heard a biologist say turtles are declining in Algonquin Park because people are feeding foxes, too many are surviving the winter and foxes eat turtle eggs. If it wasn't for the fact that he's talking about maybe 20 foxes in a 7,000 kilometre park I'd be inclined to believe him. Biologists are entitled to opinions just like everyone else. But sometimes even a biologists opinion is just an opinion, and I've seen them be dead wrong often enough to put a caution on that. Make them quote their sources. So even if the worst case scenario was true, the majority of those ducks food for the day was not going to be bread. They were going to get one Timmy's bun between the 8 of them.

Now here's the problem, my friend though well meaning , was just incredibly rude. He's caught up in the whole "birder mentality" thing. And next year when we go out, we're going to have a chit chat about what an ignorant idiot he was. I got the impression he had some valid reason for doing what he did. He came over yelling and screaming like a banshee. I thought someone was drowning. I was in panic mode. "Oh my god I almost fed the friggin ducks a piece of bread." Now, I just feel abused. So my advice, in this whole issue is, don't open your bleeping mouth unless you actually know what you're talking about.

If you're going to be near wild animals, learn about them. Learn what to do an not to do. I can tell you why not to feed wolves, and I'll point you to the biologist who explained it to me. But all animals are not wolves. Saying you shouldn't bait animals living near campgrounds who are eating garbage with nutritious food, makes you look like an idiot. And I'll be happy to point that out to you. I tell you, a lot of these do gooders enforcing the "rules" need a serious dose of "what for" doled out to them. Just because you follow someone's bogus animal welfare rules doesn't make you a good person. It only makes you as good as the person who promotes those rules, and from what I can tell, a lot of them are in your face idiots.

My basic rule.... don't feed any animal that's big enough to hurt you. If you feed an animal, he will think you're his buddy. Animals routinely play fight with their buddies. If that animal can injure you in a play fight, you want him ignoring you, not thinking you're his buddy. After that, find out enough about the animals you want to photograph, to make informed decisions about baiting and disrupting their lives. There simply are no shortcuts.

The fact that you sit on your sofa and think about animals, doesn't make you an expert.

As a parting thought, if you share your food with animals because you are human, do you tell people not to because you're inhuman?

Just my two cents worth.

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Last edited by normhead; 04-19-2015 at 05:32 PM.

[Kerrowdown]

Staking out live goats to attract Tyrannosaurus Rex is just wrong.

Aye... they bust through big high fences not long after, perhaps I should try some.

[Blue]

Sometimes working with unbaited wiild animals, you get the angle you get and they go over the hill. I have some fair but not great shots of a wild baboon troop. Getting better shots may have resulted in me or my "wing man" getting some limbs ripped off.

K20D3942ec by [url=https://www.flickr.com/people/40111134@N03/]

K20D4052cflick by [url=https://www.flickr.com/people/40111134@N03/]

[Rupert]

As a parting thought, if you share your food with animals because you are human, do you tell people not to because you're inhuman?

Just my two cents worth.

I guess I'm human after all......according to Mrs Rupert, there has always been some question about that.

Yep, I feed the animals here. Birds, squirrels, raccoons, possums, and even that Big Chicken that showed up in my yard. What makes people think animals don't get hungry too? I love to see them eat and stay healthy, in particular when it is cold and icy and food is hard to find. Maybe some prefer photographing a dead frozen animal or bird that starved to death in a snowstorm, but I'm not one of them! No animals will starve around my place, I guarantee!

Because I feed them...I shouldn't shoot them??? Ridiculous! They aren't disturbed by my shots through my office windows and mostly don't even know I am here.

Shot this one a few minutes ago as he was enjoying a free lunch on my cedar fence.


No apology here.....I feed animals and they love it!

Regards!

EDIT: Just shot this a few minutes after my post above.....this little Army Squirrel did not like the idea of not feeding animals and wanted to deliver this message to you non-feeders.....

Stop your propaganda against feeding animals......unless you want some of this!



Remember....there are more of them than there are of us.

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Last edited by Rupert; 04-19-2015 at 01:56 PM.

[jacamar]

Normhead's post reminded me that, in the Highway 60 corridor through Algonquin Provincial Park we inadvertently "feed" the moose by applying road salt in the winter, which attracts them to the roadside vegetation in the spring and summer, and enables 30-40 people to pull over and get "wilderness" pictures like this (next time I'll get a pic of the people and the Moose)!.

[normhead]

Here, let me help you....


When you do get the people and the moose... post it here....
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/129761-landscape-phot...r-photo-7.html

[jacamar]

Here, let me help you....


When you do get the people and the moose... post it here....
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/129761-landscape-phot...r-photo-7.html

Our Haliburton County cottage rental (including one or more Algonquin trips) is booked for the first half of August this year. Not as many moose then but I'll see what I can do!

[boriscleto]

No baiting going on here...just the most photographed Red-headed Woodpecker family in history...



It's considered a rare bird in NY. This pair comes back every year to the same marshy patch of dead trees and nests in full sight of the road right next to a National Wildlife Refuge...

[normhead]

Cool, did you get pictures of the feathery little dudes?

Our Haliburton County cottage rental (including one or more Algonquin trips) is booked for the first half of August this year. Not as many moose then but I'll see what I can do!

Moose are just unpredictable. This time of year they've lost half their fur and are even more ugly than they usually are. By August, they'll have some winter coat back and will at least look healthy. If you drive up though Bancroft, you'll be driving right right past my house (if you consider a KM away "right past", but we do have aline of site to the river.). Wave to the north when you get to Highway 60 and Post Road, we might be looking.

[jacamar]

Cool, did you get pictures of the feathery little dudes?



Moose are just unpredictable. This time of year they've lost half their fur and are even more ugly than they usually are. By August, they'll have some winter coat back and will at least look healthy. If you drive up though Bancroft, you'll be driving right right past my house (if you consider a KM away "right past", but we do have aline of site to the river.). Wave to the north when you get to Highway 60 and Post Road, we might be looking.

August is the dog days for birds in Ontario's cottage country-the songbirds are hard to find until the first stirrings of migration towards the end of the month. I posted a few shots on the 300m+ long lenses thread. These were with the DA 55-300mm lens. This year, with the new DA* 300mm and 1.4x teleconverter, who knows what might happen!


We stay near the south end of Algonquin's southern "panhandle" - we drive to the Highway 60 corridor through Maynooth and Whitney.

[normhead]

August is the dog days for birds in Ontario's cottage country-the songbirds are hard to find until the first stirrings of migration towards the end of the month. I posted a few shots on the 300m+ long lenses thread. These were with the DA 55-300mm lens. This year, with the new DA* 300mm and 1.4x teleconverter, who knows what might happen!


We stay near the south end of Algonquin's southern "panhandle" - we drive to the Highway 60 corridor through Maynooth and Whitney.

Whitney-Maynooth-Bancroft is our shopping run sometimes. We've driven the bottom of the panhandle many times when we bought out house and while moving. Only been down there once a few times. My daughter has a cottage down there, on one of the small lakes on the way to Kenesis lake.

[Rupert]

This Jay wanted to get in his vote for feeding the animals!



........ so did this little fellow!


They all gotta eat too!

Of course, if you feed them they will keep coming, requiring you to take lots of photos......who want so do that?
Regards!

[Dlanor Sekao]

In Missouri the Raccoons chewed through my Styrofoam ice chest and fought over everything all night long and ate everything........they ate my food !
In Maine the skunks got into my tent and ate Snickers and Cookies.....They ate my food !
The grass in my backyard feeds the cottontail rabbits....They ate my lawn !
In Baja Mexico the Island Mice ate everything...... everywhere.....They ate my food !
In Arizona a black bear carried off the entire Ice chest and I assume.....it ate my food !
Everyplace I go the Bee's......drink from my soda can......they drink my food !
Also in Baja Mexico on Angel De La Guard Island the Crows/Ravens pecked holes all over in my (4) 2.5 gallon water jugs to get a drink....It ALL drained out......I had No water left.......They almost killed me ! I went 4 days without a single drop of water in 110 degrees.
This proves feeding animals is dangerous..........FOR ME !

I DO feed the squirrels Nuts and get an occasional picture that's worth keeping while camping. But for the most part I don't willingly feed any Animals.....they simply take what they want !
If I had a buddy that freaked out over a piece of bread for some Ducks ??? I would smear Anise oil all over his camp and attract every Black bear in the area to come eat him !.....lol

[lightbox]

I've been holding back my opinion because it won't be popular, but here goes...

If we're talking about ecology and messing with nature, then of course it makes sense to be respectful. I agree with @normhead - that there's no sense in flying off the handle about wives tales and unsubstantiated claims. Just don't do anything stupid and try to keep your duck feeding to a minimum.

If we're talking about ethics... well... then I have to raise the question of why it's okay to breed and keep animals as vanity / lap lets for our amusement. That rabbit hole goes much deeper.

[r0ckstarr]

Just don't do anything stupid and try to keep your duck feeding to a minimum.

Replace ducks with bears. Still feel the same?