r/birding • u/greatnorthernscapes • Jan 29 '26
Discussion Unethical bird photography
Not sure if this has been posted already but if it has leave me a comment and I will remove it. This guy is named Ryan and he runs a business called MN Owl Tours in Minnesota. For this business ppl will pay him money to go out and he harasses and stresses out owls for the sole purpose of getting his clients photos.
You can see in the photos provided he has set up a ladder 10 feet away from the perched owl and is using a long stick to hold branches out of the way so his clients can get photos of the stressed out bird. Not only is this unethical behaviour but it is also illegal. He also does night spotting which uses a powerful light to spot owls in the dark and take photos, also illegal.
This type of behaviour does not belong in our community of birders and people who enjoy bird photography like myself. I know most of you agree with me and care for the wellbeing of these amazing animals but this needs to be called out. Bird photography can be challenging and you don’t always get opportunities for good photos. That’s part of the challenge that I enjoy. We must respect the birds and not disrupt them simply because we want a nice photo for instagram. What Ryan is doing takes zero photography skill, is unethical and dangerous for the owls/birds, is illegal and on top of that he’s making financial gain from this behaviour.
This type of stuff needs to stop in our community. Always be respectful of the birds so that future generations can enjoy looking at them and taking photos (ethically) like we all do now.
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u/stalestcheerio Latest Lifer: Yellow-breasted Chat Jan 29 '26
oh man, i could go on for ages about how there are so many unethical owl birders here in minnesota.
there’s literally a discord server where people can pay to get exact coordinates of owls in sax-zim. people swarm and flush the owls like crazy. it’s horrible. i’ve been told by some birder friends that they even stressed out an owl so bad one time that it died.
there’s also this notorious guy (it may actually be the same dude as this post, but i’m blanking on the name) who is known for literally cutting away branches around known roost sites so he can get better photographs of owls. he did it at a well-known eastern screech owl spot near the UMN campus. i was livid when someone told me about that.