The health conditions of the loon is in concerns. I'm not an expert therefore pay more attention not to affecting the loon to feed, sleep or take rest.
I was there on 18/3 Fri when the loon landed on beach once near the restaurant, and I've heard info from some birders who were on Lamma 19/3 & 20/3 the past weekend.
Here are some observations:
On Friday afternoon, the loon swam very near the popular beach even when 8 people were on the beach(heard the same on Sat morning before boats chasing). So close that even my 400mm lens could have photographed the bird whole in full frame(but I avoided myself to walk that close). Around 3:15pm when no people on the beach only a few birders including me hiding on the right far end of the beach waiting, then the loon finally landed on the popular beach, seemed want to have a short rest while feeding...(actually it attempted serveral times to take rest on that day)
From what I heard from various birders, on Sat morning the loon was still very "tamed", swam close enough to make everybody very happy, but after boats-chasing, it became quite alert and kept distant with people even on Sunday morning. Of course from this forum I knew more that on Sunday one more boat even chased the loon resulted in making it in flight...
I think birders who love and care about birds more than photos may concern:
1) when the birds was so close & "tamed" for photographing & observations if you keep staying on land, even my "short lens" as 400mm is more then enough, what's the convincing reason for people to get on a boat chasing after it(in risk of intimidating it, wasting it's energy)?
2) Obviously some people before getting on boats already heard of some worries about the loon's health conditions & some even suspecting it has difficulty for flying, then not easy to undertand why these people still decided going for boat-chasing unless they didn't care about the well being of the bird...
3) of course since the loon like to landeded on the popular beach resting for a while when feeding, it's very condsiderate of birders not to stay on that beach...but I also believe for that bird, it doesn't count risk of danger directly by distance--when people stayed on land/beach still not to chase with a distance of say 15 meters, it could feel comparartively comfortable, but obvously when people were on boats with 15m and pointing several big lens chasing continuously after it, the loon would feel much more threatened or at least intimidated...
More, Sunday afternoon a birder saw when all people stayed on landed while the loon quite distant in the harbour, a local boat tried get close to the bird and threatened it to come back to the beach side. Hope the boat owner were not intentionally mean to threaten it...
[ Last edited by rosefinch at 21/03/2016 23:28 ]
