Wow. My son and husband and I were among those that must have left shortly before this happened. There certainly does not seem to be any signage indicating it is a restricted area, though I suppose where people were parking was presumably private property (though unsecured and unposted as far as I noticed). We were thrilled to get such a good view of the owl. Thanks to those who shared their scope. Penny Hillemann On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 6:21 PM, James Griffin <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Snowy was seen perched on bldg just before UPS on Cargo Rd between 3:30 > and 4:30 this afternoon. A small group of us were detained by local Police > who asked for our ID's and inquired as to the reason for our presence. > When I told them we were looking at a bird he was dismayed and told us > that we were in a secure area and photography was strictly forbidden. Only > 1 of us had a camera and we were quick to point out that we were looking > thru bins and not cameras. He also seemed confused by the fact that non of > us had ever met before today. "How did we know to come to the airport?", > he asked. In unison we replied that we read about it on line @ this site. I > told him that had he been 15 minutes earlier he would have encountered a > much larger group. At this point there were 2 police cars and 2 officers > asking questions. After running our ID's they returned them and thanked us > for our cooperation. All in all a not so unpleasant experience except for > the fact that he informed us in no uncertain terms that we were trespassing > and Cargo Rd. was private for use by employees of local companies only. We > were instructed that future transgressions would not be tolerated. My > question, which I kept to myself, is: If the road is private shouldn't it > be posted as such? When I left the area I stopped at the intersection with > Longfellow and could not find any sign denoting restricted access. The > bird is there but it might be difficult to walk anywhere without attracted > unwanted attention from the authorities. FYI they said they were responding > to a report of suspicious behavior. I got my Snowy for the year so I'm > happy but concerned about future forays. Good birding to all ! > ---- > Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net > Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html >