Paper short abstract:

Practices and terms such as sound hunting or shooting pictures refer to forms of mediatised hunting. In my input to the roundtable I would like to raise the issue of the role and ethics of alternative and mediatised ways of "hunting" through cameras and microphones.

Paper long abstract:

During my research about the (aural-sonic) relationships of humans and wild birds I came across different ornithophilic people, from vegan animal activists, musicians to active hunters. One key experience in relation to hunting ideologies happened in a conversation with an Icelandic biologist and bird watcher. When he was confronted with my experiences with Icelandic hunters that shoot dozens of geese or trap Iceland's tourist signature bird, the puffins, he said, that under ecological and extinction crisis he thinks that it would be better that they would shoot these animals with cameras than with rifles and that he would tell them so, not making friends. Myself a field recordist for my research about the role of listening to and the sounds of wild birds, I "hunt" sounds of animals, but this term doesn't feel appropriate to me because it doesn't go along with my personal ethical attitude. I could contribute to the roundtable some insights from the experienced huge contrast of ethics of hunting which I encountered during field research (and field ornithological training) in Switzerland, Spain and Iceland and with people that "love" wild living birds and animals, but still in various shades chase, hunt or shoot them.