For me it’s driving while under the influence. If you couldn’t tell, I like me some ganja. However I have long since held the belief that it is utterly insane to drive while under the influence of most substances, with maybe nicotine and caffeine being the exception. All too often I see other stoners smoking and driving, which I simply can’t fathom. I’ve only operated a vehicle once under the influence and it was just to move a U-Haul around the block to a different parking spot, which was such a scary experience while high that I refuse to even consider getting behind the wheel again while high.
Pishing. Some birds will make a warning call known as a “pish.” Making that call yourself—if you do it correctly and have a bit of luck—can make flocks of tiny, hard to spot birds come close to you as they try to figure out what some ‘hidden bird’ is warning everyone about.
If you’re a bird watcher wanting to spot them this is super exciting! And if it’s in an isolated area or somewhere not many other birders visit it’s not super stressful to the birds. The problem comes with places like Central Park that are bird watching meccas, and suddenly a patch of woods might have dozens of people doing that in the span of a few hours. Repeated or prolonged pishing can stress birds out the same way that playing recorded bird song at them for hours can stress them out, because it makes them think there’s an unseen threat to confront.
To me it’s just disrespectful to the wildlife. They’re not there to be your toys or to fill out your IRL pokedex, and stressing them out because you want a better look is edging into unethical territory.
This is really interesting because I’m a very casual bird observer and occasionally try to whistle to get their attention, but I hadn’t thought about this aspect of it!
Whistling is probably fine since it’s not something they’re likely to mistake for a warning call from another bird or as a song from their own species, so don’t feel bad about that! 👍
You may know this already, but in Scotland, the term “pishing” is synonymous with “pissing” - ‘going for a pish’, ‘he was totally pished’ (drunk), ‘i pished myself laughing’, etc.
Just a heads up in case you ever decide to come here and ask someone where a good place for pishing might be :-)
