[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Tursiops

Well, I'm glad the response hasn't been totally negative, but as some serious questions have been raised about the ethics, perhps its not a course of action I should recommend. I shall inform the OP accordingly.

With all due respect to yourself, anecdotal evidence is not scientific evidence, which is what I was hoping for, perhaps unrealistically. Apologies if that was unclear.

Fair enough - though you are always going to gather only annectdotal evidence from forums because that is what they are - essentially a collection of annectdotes. Although many of the incidents mentioned above resulted in animal cruelty cases taken by either RSPB or RSPCA or Police WLOs - so a decent search of the records (which I have neither time or inclination for) would produce back up documentary evidence - which moves the quality of evidence from anectodatal to factual.

I have spoken to a freind who does research at the BTO and he says that "neither they or the RSPB have ever researched the issue in depth but as they both recomend a code where the interests of the bird are paramount they generally recomend against hand taming as a general practice"