Using live bait for nature Photography?

The reality of the photo is that it happened and you didn't add anything into or take anything away from that which was seen in the view finder. The last time I looked, I'd call that reality. However, when you view my image, you might perceive the reality differently than I intended especially if you assume that I got close without baiting. (or in a zoo, etc.) That doesn't change the fact that I did not alter what the view finder saw.

I am also going to agree with Kim Kaiser on this. Using the Owls as an example, by baiting the owl with a live animal you are saying that it's OK to waste a life to capture an image. If you don't allow the owl to eat the mouse, it creates an equally cruel situation where you've caused an already challenged hunter to expend valuable energy without any chance of return ont that investment. Laying out mealworms for a Bluebird or 'butchering' an orange for Orioles is not quite the same as using a small, live mammal to attract and photograph a raptor or any other predator. This is just my opinion.

In the end, I guess it just comes down to personal ethics and moral beliefs.

Wayne Nicholas wrote:SNIP
In the end, I guess it just comes down to personal ethics and moral beliefs.

Amen

Wayne Nicholas wrote:I am also going to agree with Kim Kaiser on this. Using the Owls as an example, by baiting the owl with a live animal you are saying that it's OK to waste a life to capture an image. If you don't allow the owl to eat the mouse, it creates an equally cruel situation where you've caused an already challenged hunter to expend valuable energy without any chance of return ont that investment. Laying out mealworms for a Bluebird or 'butchering' an orange for Orioles is not quite the same as using a small, live mammal to attract and photograph a raptor or any other predator. This is just my opinion.

In the end, I guess it just comes down to personal ethics and moral beliefs.

Waste? Nothing is ever wasted, bacteria will see to that.

I know quite a few photographers who pick up roadkills like rabbits, blue hares, roe deer, pheasants and use them as bait for wild or captive raptors, what's your view of this?
Monik

I never could quite understand this "energy consumption" thing. I think it's another one of those hysterical rumours which have no basis in fact or common sense.

I've watched harriers for hours on end, noting their flight paths through a marsh. During their gliding flight I have counted the number of times in 1/2 hr period that they actually ""take a dive" to the ground in an attempt to capture prey (extra energy expended).I consistently see 10 or more dives in 1/2 hr...or 20 times an hour. If a person were out there with his "fake" mouse, do you really think it makes a hill of beans if the harrier made an attempt 21 times in an hour vs 20 times and hour. Even more to the point, if he hunts for 5 hrs a day...does it really matter "energy wise" if he took 100 dives or 101...of course not.

I could say a similar thing about red-tails I've watched when they are mousing. Many attempts, a few successes. One more unsucessfull attempt doesn't amount to anything in the large scheme of things.

Winter can be a "harder" time for many birds, but from snowy owls to chickadees, this notion that they are just about out of energy and ready to drop dead, couldn't be further from the truth. Most of them do remarkably well, and look as well too.

As far as the ethics are concerned, thats an individual question each person has to answer for himself.

Wayne Nicholas wrote: .... by baiting the owl with a live animal you are saying that it's OK to waste a life .....

But is it wasted? Might the now-satiated owl take a break from hunting, sparing a vole that otherwise would have been lunch? Either way, the owl is going to eat mammals until it meet's its caloric needs. My main concern is that the main subject not be harmed by baiting.

Personally I only kill animals to eat, never to collect throphies, photographs or to have fun. I base my life philosophy on native people living close to nature, eco philosophers and buddism. I respect life and try not to take more than I need of anything. I'm not a fundamentalist or religious, but have developed and continue to develop a code of ethics that I let guide me when faced with choices of some importance. If you are OK by killing wildlife to get a photo then do it, if not, don't. Simple, isn't it?

As for natural selection, humankind has thrown much of nature so off balance that it can't be said to be natural anymore. A good example is how we kill some animals to keep its population to our desired artificial levels. We compete with wildlife for food, they interefere with safety on roads and airports, predators go berserk on farm animals, and we poison crops to keep away insects and birds....

Svein-Frode wrote:Personally I only kill animals to eat, never to collect throphies, photographs or to have fun. I base my life philosophy on native people living close to nature, eco philosophers and buddism. I respect life and try not to take more than I need of anything. I'm not a fundamentalist or religious, but have developed and continue to develop a code of ethics that I let guide me when faced with choices of some importance. If you are OK by killing wildlife to get a photo then do it, if not, don't. Simple, isn't it?

As for natural selection, humankind has thrown much of nature so off balance that it can't be said to be natural anymore. A good example is how we kill some animals to keep its population to our desired artificial levels. We compete with wildlife for food, they interefere with safety on roads and airports, predators go berserk on farm animals, and we poison crops to keep away insects and birds....

Incredibly well said!

Using the Owls as an example, by baiting the owl with a live animal you are saying that it's OK to waste a life to capture an image. If you don't allow the owl to eat the mouse, it creates an equally cruel situation where you've caused an already challenged hunter to expend valuable energy without any chance of return ont that investment. Laying out mealworms for a Bluebird or 'butchering' an orange for Orioles is not quite the same as using a small, live mammal to attract and photograph a raptor or any other predator.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I totally agree wit you Wayne. For the first time I'm really surprised with a Poll result . I never expected that roughly half of us wouldn't have any problems to go to a pet-shop, buy a teeny-weeny furry mouse and condemned him to die just to make a killer shot.

Alexandre Vaz wrote:

Using the Owls as an example, by baiting the owl with a live animal you are saying that it's OK to waste a life to capture an image. If you don't allow the owl to eat the mouse, it creates an equally cruel situation where you've caused an already challenged hunter to expend valuable energy without any chance of return ont that investment. Laying out mealworms for a Bluebird or 'butchering' an orange for Orioles is not quite the same as using a small, live mammal to attract and photograph a raptor or any other predator.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I totally agree wit you Wayne. For the first time I'm really surprised with a Poll result . I never expected that roughly half of us wouldn't have any problems to go to a pet-shop, buy a teeny-weeny furry mouse and condemned him to die just to make a killer shot.

Just a personal observation, but I have seen many killer (no pun intended) shots of owls and other predators but how many killer shots have we all posted of the small creatures, like voles, mice, etc. I, personally, choose to photograph them, not use them as bait.

Steve S wrote:I never could quite understand this "energy consumption" thing.If a person were out there with his "fake" mouse, do you really think it makes a hill of beans if the harrier made an attempt 21 times in an hour vs 20 times and hour. Even more to the point, if he hunts for 5 hrs a day...does it really matter "energy wise" if he took 100 dives or 101...of course not.

First off I'm not going to get into the right or wrong of feeding the owls but this comparison isn't really fair. I can agree with what you said for harriers or redtails etc but for the typical owl invasion situation where these northern owls are often living right on the edge of surviving the next day or not it simply isn't the same. Using a fake mouse and making him expend energy in harsh winter conditions when there is no reward is wrong in my opinion. Letting him have the mouse changes the situation though for sure. Having said that, this winter so far they have moved south into areas that have a fairly good vole population this year and starvation is not at this point taking a toll.

I too am not going to get into the ethical discussion. To each his own. We all have to sleep at night.

As for the mice, what's worse getting fed to a wild bird or getting eaten by someone's pet snake? That's pretty much the way it is for most "pet store" mice.

I agree with Jim that if you're going to bait birds at least let them eat the darn bait!

Neil Fitzgerald wrote:

Wayne Nicholas wrote:I am also going to agree with Kim Kaiser on this. Using the Owls as an example, by baiting the owl with a live animal you are saying that it's OK to waste a life to capture an image. If you don't allow the owl to eat the mouse, it creates an equally cruel situation where you've caused an already challenged hunter to expend valuable energy without any chance of return ont that investment. Laying out mealworms for a Bluebird or 'butchering' an orange for Orioles is not quite the same as using a small, live mammal to attract and photograph a raptor or any other predator. This is just my opinion.

In the end, I guess it just comes down to personal ethics and moral beliefs.

Waste? Nothing is ever wasted, bacteria will see to that.

Neil, I am sure you can how out of context your answer is. :roll:
The waste is the life you sacrifice for no other reason than the personal motive to profit from that sacrifice. I agree nothing will be 'wasted' of the scraps, but that is merely a byproduct and doesn't negate the original motive for your action(s).

Jim Zipp wrote:

Steve S wrote:I never could quite understand this "energy consumption" thing.If a person were out there with his "fake" mouse, do you really think it makes a hill of beans if the harrier made an attempt 21 times in an hour vs 20 times and hour. Even more to the point, if he hunts for 5 hrs a day...does it really matter "energy wise" if he took 100 dives or 101...of course not.

First off I'm not going to get into the right or wrong of feeding the owls but this comparison isn't really fair. I can agree with what you said for harriers or redtails etc but for the typical owl invasion situation where these northern owls are often living right on the edge of surviving the next day or not it simply isn't the same. Using a fake mouse and making him expend energy in harsh winter conditions when there is no reward is wrong in my opinion. Letting him have the mouse changes the situation though for sure. Having said that, this winter so far they have moved south into areas that have a fairly good vole population this year and starvation is not at this point taking a toll.

I agree that if you lure them, then go ahead and treat them to a free meal. As far as the owl invasion, as you mentioned, the occurence of an invasion doesn't necessarily mean owls are starving to death...they might be a little smarter than we give them credit for, deciding to move south long before they are desperately hungry.

My main point is that there are very few people out there baiting owls or other birds of prey and their effect on the owls, if any, pales in comparison to the thousands of birders and photographers chasing the owls around to get a glimpse or a picture. Having said that, I also believe that this pursuit, be it by birders, photographers or others, also has little if any impact on any individual species.

Most of these type arguements are a "tempest in a teapot", with the real danger to most birds of prey being habitat destruction, by a long, long margin.

As a side note I once tried using a mouse as bait....he got about as cold as I did just sitting outside...with a little bit of an arguement.. the pet shop took him back. I told the guy I felt better now...he laughed and said "We only have then to feed the snakes". Such is life

As for the mice, what's worse getting fed to a wild bird or getting eaten by someone's pet snake?

Greg, I agree it's equally cruel. I wouldn't want to have a captive snake either, specially if I had to buy live rodents to feed her.
Without going into further debate, as a rule I'm totally against any activity (besides fulfilling the most basic necessities, like food) that causes animal death or suffering, and that includes hunting, rodeos, bullfights, photographing owls with live bait and more... IMO, arguing that the photographers who are baiting the owls are doing a good service by helping the owls to survive the harsh winter sounds a little intellectually dishonest to me. I worked professionally as an ornithologist and as environmentalist, and believe me that I'm always concerned with the survival of wild species, but at a more basic level and from an ethical stand point, the captive bread mice deserves the same respect as the most endangered species.
This owls are not being threatened by human activities in particular so they should be able to manage without our interference.

Steve S wrote:

Jim Zipp wrote:

Steve S wrote:I never could quite understand this "energy consumption" thing.If a person were out there with his "fake" mouse, do you really think it makes a hill of beans if the harrier made an attempt 21 times in an hour vs 20 times and hour. Even more to the point, if he hunts for 5 hrs a day...does it really matter "energy wise" if he took 100 dives or 101...of course not.

First off I'm not going to get into the right or wrong of feeding the owls but this comparison isn't really fair. I can agree with what you said for harriers or redtails etc but for the typical owl invasion situation where these northern owls are often living right on the edge of surviving the next day or not it simply isn't the same. Using a fake mouse and making him expend energy in harsh winter conditions when there is no reward is wrong in my opinion. Letting him have the mouse changes the situation though for sure. Having said that, this winter so far they have moved south into areas that have a fairly good vole population this year and starvation is not at this point taking a toll.

I agree that if you lure them, then go ahead and treat them to a free meal. As far as the owl invasion, as you mentioned, the occurence of an invasion doesn't necessarily mean owls are starving to death...they might be a little smarter than we give them credit for, deciding to move south long before they are desperately hungry.

My main point is that there are very few people out there baiting owls or other birds of prey and their effect on the owls, if any, pales in comparison to the thousands of birders and photographers chasing the owls around to get a glimpse or a picture.
Having said that, I also believe that this pursuit, be it by birders, photographers or others, also has little if any impact on any individual species.

Have to disagree completely with you there on your last paragraph steve, A seven year study on killer whales in Puget sound showed that whale watching by the 100.000 plus visitors there each year caused the whales to spend shorter amounts of time foraging, had to increase volume to communicate, spent shorter amounts of time in traditional resting / foraging areas etc etc etc... It´s a major impact on that species in that area and may very well be contributing to the viability of the population.

Such studies are very time intensive and must be done over long periods of time

I refer to the orca study as I´m not a birder and don´t keep up with orinthilogical (sp) papers but the principle is the same with many key predators, even more so with a non-resident population

G

SNIP

Hi,

I am ambivalent and didn't vote because none of the options fitted me.

I really am not particularly concerned with the fate of the store-bought mice. I eat meat, I wear leather shoes, those animals are used to acheive what is really a luxury end. My concern is with the LOCAL rodents.

It is pretty clear that rodents carry viruses (no shock there) but what is less well known is that within a species there are location-specific viral subtypes that are commensal (read present in the animal but not harmful to the animal) in the rodent native to the area but lethal to rodents introduced form the outside....... or vice-versa. This is one unusual way that rodents happen to maintain territories in groups much larger than a "family" but smaller than "subspecies". This was worked out after the hantavirus epidemic in four corners-- people looked inot rodent-borne viruses and noticed that a virtus which was carried harmlessly in one rodent from one area was lethal to an otherwise identical rodent from some distance away.

Store bought mice are raised in crowded quarters and by people who have very little interest in the long-term health of the rodent. After all, they are being sold as food! These conditions are perfect for disease transmission-- stressed overcrowded animals. Thus, when we feed a store-bought mouse to a wild owl, we are essentially depositing a carrier of rodent viruses into a naive population.
We have plenty of examples of what happens when we move a virus - or other infective agent-- out of its native environs into new territory. West Nile, HIV, etc etc.

Soooo..... I am apprehensive about what we may be doing to the native rodent populations. The raptors that live there for the rst of the year need them, and I am not sure about the ethics of releasing disease inot a naive rodent population.

Just my $0.02.

I know that a lot of the wonderful owl pictures posted recently were taken (and made possible) because live mice were used to bait the owl. My biggest problem with this is the following: If this baiting is done near roads/highways, perhaps the owls would become more accustomed to hunting or just hanging out near the roads/highways. This in turn could possibly result in more owls being injured by cars using the road/highways.

I have seen the statistics that show how many GG Owls have been hit by cars this winter in NE Minnesota. To the best of my memory about 70 GGO's have suffered this cruel fate this winter. This seems like an awfully high number, but considering the huge number of owls in the NE MN area this winter perhaps it is not.

The bottom line for me (and there is no way that I know of to show that it has indeed happened) is that if baiting results in any injury to the birds, then I am 100% against baiting. Also, I think that for one to put his/her need or desire to get a good photograph ahead of the welfare of the owls in definitely wrong. In a few months all of these wonderful flight shots of owls (presumably obtained by baiting) will be forgotten.

I'm surprised that very few have made the distinction between baiting and feeding. The two are mutually exclusive, and I would think that many would have opposite opinions about the appropriateness of the two.

whf4 wrote:I am ambivalent and didn't vote because none of the options fitted me.

Me too.

whf4 wrote:I really am not particularly concerned with the fate of the store-bought mice. I eat meat, I wear leather shoes, those animals are used to acheive what is really a luxury end.

Yes; if we believe feeding captive-raised mice to owls is unethical on grounds of sacrificing animal life for the sake of mere photography, how can we also not believe consumption (and production) of any[\i] slaughtered animal product for "nonessential" purposes is equally unethical? If it is argued that harvest of animal products is for the survival of a business or industry and not just luxury, the same argument can be made by many photographers.

whf4 wrote:My concern is with the LOCAL rodents.

But the store-bought mice used by "owlers" aren't going to have a chance to mingle with the local wild rodents, are they? However, is there a possibility of tainted mice adversely affecting the owls?

To my mind, two strong arguments against feeding mice to owls have been raised. One is the one Bruce just mentioned (which isn't actually an argument against feeding owls but how it is done), and on which I earlier commented on a thread on NPN:

"The main problem created by birders or photographers luring the owls with mice is their tendency to place the mice right out on the road. On one evening I was departing the bog and was about to pass a group of birders/photogs parked on the roadside. As I approached, a GGO suddenly swooped in front of my approaching car to pick up a mouse which they'd deposited there. I wasn't so close as to nearly hit the bird, but the potential was clearly there. If they'd placed the mouse well off the road closer to the edge of the trees, where the owl would be looking for prey anyway, it wouldn't be a problem IMHO."

The other strong argument is that raised by Alexandre Vaz, about potentially altering the mechanics of natural selection by "choosing" a lucky owl to receive a bounty of mice. The chosen owl may not be a genetically strong one, and feeding (very many) mice (over a season) to this bird may unnaturally increase its chances of passing on its weak genes.

This latter argument could be applied to any bird feeding situation as well.

I now assume that most of the spectacular owl images posted here and elsewhere, at least those of birds in head-on flight or swooping in for a landing right in front of the photographer, are obtained by baiting or feeding. As one who sells photos, as well as makes them available for educational and awareness purposes where dramatic photos like these can really do some good, I can't realistically compete in a market full of these types of photos, and I must admit to having been feeling the "if I can't beat them maybe I should join them" sentiment. Either I give in and join them, or I concentrate on some other niche of the market.