mar 15

I took a walk this evening to see if I could find any American Woodcocks in Central Park. I did not. I did find about sixty thousand people and fifteen thousand dogs out enjoying the moderate weather, and two Fox Sparrows.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 10:17pm and is filed under Central Park, NYC, Birds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “mar 15”

  1. Alina
    March 15th, 2008 22:33
    1

    Cathy,
    I came across this today in the Seattle Weekly…
    Thought you might find it amusing maybe?

    Dear Uptight Seattleite,

    I’m doing a bit of birding on the beach by the Ballard Locks when this hippie-ish couple show up with their dog. They proceed to remove the dog’s leash and let him chase the birds I’m quietly watching. My girlfriend says I shouldn’t get into a confrontation, so I just give them a dirty look. But what is the deal with people and their dogs? What part of “you’re stressing the goldeneyes, mergansers, and greater white-fronted geese” do they not understand?
    Irked Birder

    Dear Birder,

    The socio-ecosystem of a public beach is a delicate balance of humans and nature, rights and responsibilities. Nature has most of the rights, while we humans have most of the responsibilities. (Quick aside to my friends in Blue Ridge: You can say hello to some of our rights at the upcoming vegan beach barbecue on your beach. Your lawyers are invited, too!) So how do dogs fit in? Very subtly, Birder. A Seattle dog is a family member. A quasi-child. A mini-human, if you will. That’s why evening activities in this city are always cut short—everyone has to rush home and attend to the bowel movements of these mini-humans. Stew in your microbrew alone at the bar as much as you want, but valuing the needs of an animal over interaction with other humans is a perfectly valid lifestyle choice.

    And it’s also why a dog at the beach holds the full rights of both nature and mini-humanity. If you have trouble understanding this, consider how a bicycle is equal to a car on the road but can hop on the sidewalk and instantly gain the status of a pedestrian. A really fast pedestrian. Ding, ding! On your left! Anyway, how can you legitimately say dogs aren’t allowed to chase the birds? Isn’t that like saying the birds aren’t allowed to eat worms? And about those birds of yours. How natural are they, really? Lounging about in the city instead of foraging in the wild? They just sound kind of frivolous.

  2. Catherine
    March 15th, 2008 23:50
    2

    Yikes - that’s a can of worms! I am more tolerant than some (love those doggies), but the dog-lover here really needs to broaden his/her horizons a bit - obviously has no concept of bird migration. A migratory shorebird has just traveled farther in the last day or two than the dogwalker will cover in a couple of years, and is particularly vulnerable to disturbance by loose dogs.

    These are the farthest-ranging of any species on the planet, and have fewer and fewer safe places to land each year. The toll of a few thousand miles of migration, twice a year, is considerable.

    I’m not ranting, but the letter-writer has made a pretty stupid return argument.

    It would be nice if the dog-walkers knew enough to recognize migration times and migrant species, and leash accordingly, at the very least.

    Thanks for the thought-provoking article - hopefully someone retorted similarly in the paper.

  3. Mark Lynch
    March 16th, 2008 07:00
    3

    The running of dogs in public spaces is starting to become a very large problem here in MA. And as Catherine said: it’s a can of worms. One of the worst cases I have seen was at a local Wildlife Management Area (Delaney in Stow)which was also immensely popular with dog owners who would hold organized runs there by breed. Well, there was this wonderful mixed grass area in which GRASSHOPPER SPARROWS bred, including one of the first documented SONG X GRASSHOPPER hybrids. Well, instead of using the pathways through the grassland and keeping the dogs on leashes, dogowners ran thier dogs THROUGH the grassland. I believe if it had only been a few dogs every once in a while, it would have been fine, but over the last few years the running of dogs through the spot seemed to explode exponentially. There are no longer any Grasshopper Sparrows breeding there. Now this particularly bothered me because Grasshopper Sparrows are ‘STATE LISTED” and it is state property, but what happened is that State Fish and Wildlife folks took the “side” of the dogowners. I thought there was some middle ground that could have been tried, but now it’s a fait accompli.

    Dogs are banned, even on leashes on many protected araes,including all Mass Audubon properties. However this is widely ignored, and when I have confronted people running thier dogs on sanctuary property, I have gotten into violent arguments (with dogs barking). There is a sense of ENITITLEMENT that folks should be able to run dogs wherever there is open spaces. This is what the problem is. Not the dogs, it’s the owners.

    As more and more of Massachusetts is gobbled up by sprawl, open space becomes a rare thing and the pressure on those spaces by bikers, dog owners, joggers et just increases dramatically every year. ALL of this, including birding, can have an affect of habitat and wildlife if it is done often enough. It is a matter of numbers and degrees. No one thinks just running thier dog will do any harm, but it does.

    I am smack in the middle of co-ordinating the Breeding Bird Atlas II, and we are seeing decreases in many species, especially ground nesting species and grassland species, even in protected areas. Part of the problem is pets: not just dogs (which are destructive) but people who let thier cats out and essentially subsidize predators.

    I am a pet owner (cats) and pet lover. I have for years now, kept my cats in. I understand you can’t do this with dogs, but dog owners need to get over this sense of entitlement: you just can’t run your dog ANYWHERE, especially if it is signed. This sounds obvious, but I run into it every weekend. To make matters worse, some dog owners can be real idiots, not chaining thier dog when it is barking at other passersbys et. I once was surveying UPTON SF, where walking your dogs ON LEASHES are allowed. This woman had this huge, heavy dog UNLEASHED. She yelled, as the dog was heading for me FULL BORE, “don’t worry, he’s friendly”/ Well, (1) I shouldn’t have to “worry” because you are supposed to have him on a leash and (2) frankly, I can’t trust someone’s opinion on animal behavior who I don’t know. Well, the dog hit me mid-sction, rammed me, FULL BORE, and literally knocked me off my feet and onto the ground. It was insane. THE DOG OWNER DID NOT APOLOGIZE, just called her dog and tried to laugh it off.I wanted to feed her to a pack of fishers.

    The answer of course, is to designate araes for running dogs, as most Wildlife Management Areas are already as well as some parks, but dog OWNERS need to check thier attitudes. It’s never the pet, it’s always the owner.

    Mark

  4. Frank
    March 16th, 2008 10:05
    4

    I agree with Mark that the issue is dog owners’ sense of entitlement rather than dumb dogs just wanting to run.

    In RI at Trustom Pond (a national wildlife refuge) dogs are not allowed. At first I thought this was sad, but now after visiting other parks and realizing how bad pet owners can be (especially in NYC), I’m very happy to visit and not have to deal with pets off the leash the ramping through the woods.

    Also I think in Alina’s post the writer was being sarcastic. I think the writer was pointing out the absurdity of dogs as “mini-humans.”

    Also I hate bikers who think they have rights to the sidewalk.

  5. Mark Lynch
    March 16th, 2008 14:04
    5

    Frank/Catherine/et:

    The feeling of “entitlement” also includes birders. Scott Weidensaul has a lot to say about that in the final chapter of his history of birding OF A FEATHER.

    Bikers, like dog owners, seems to be a problem that has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, and is most evident on walking/bike paths especially in RI. As soon as the numbers increase, people start to feel they can do what they want, and they have the numbers to back it up.

    But I have to say, I have had SO many REALLY bad run ins with dog owners, I find it depressing AND angering. Case in point, some years back, I used to let my old cat out in the back yard for about 15 minutes. She never left, and I watched her the entire time. I ducked in the house to take a phone call, and heard the most horrific screams. I ran out to find two huskies, with collars on, (NOW THIS IS AWFUL, SO THOSE WITH WEAK STOMACHS READ NO FURTHER)

    tore my cat up AS I CAME OUT THE DOOR. I had Sheila deal with the cat, while I got the dogs address from thier licenses. The cat was OBVIOUSLY DEAD. I went to the people’s home and confronted them: they denied up and down that thier dogs ever left thier yard, EVEN THOUGH I saw the dogs,and they had the collars on. Now I wasn’t looking for a violent confrontation, just a sincere apology and a reassurance they would keep their dogs tied up. To take the event seriously in other words. They would give me nothing and acted like I was off base getting so upset about a dead cat.

    Another time I caught a dog ripping apart two newly fledged RAVENS at Barre Falls Dam (Army Corps of Engineers location), where dogs are not allowed and it is CLEARLY POSTED several times. I saved the carcasses; got the dog’s collar number (the dog, BTW: was a “good dog, not crazy, just off the leash, unwatched and doing what dogs do). I contacted FISH AND WILDLIFE and the ENVIRONMENTAL POLICE. They found out it was the folks down the road just three houses, who just let their dog out all the time, cause it was in the country and they cared less. They were given a modest fine. Meanwhile, another “state-listed” species had a bad year.

    In every case of extreme bad dog behavior, I have never found the dogs to be out of whack. Typically they are friendly, normally active dogs: it’s the owners who seem to refuse to curb thier dog’s behavior. It is like it is some right to let thier dogs “run free”, however you attempt to define such a thing for a domestic animal. Even in the horrific cases of pit bulls mauling some person, it is the owners who have trained the dogs (or abused the dogs)and a priori, I am sure the dogs were fine. Time and again, when I have had some bad dog experience, I have found myself getting much more upset with the dog owners for thier attitudes.

    Now, I have to add: there are lots of great dog owners who take thier responsibilities seriously and love thier charges dearly. Amazingly I have found HUNTERS to be among the more responsible in dealing with thier dogs when they bump into non-hunting groups (this happens often here at various WMAs).No, I don’t hunt, never have and never will, don’t like it.

    Wouldn’t it be weird if horse owners just decided to let thier charges run free without a rider or control all over beaches, parks, and neighborhoods.

    Mark

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