Bird-watcher troubled by hunting near Logan
But Colonial-era ordinances governing the public use of tidal areas might just allow it
Holiday and business travelers know that airline authorities are serious about confiscating bottled water and tubes of toothpaste at security checkpoints. But wearing camouflage and brandishing firearms beneath the Logan Airport flight path? No problem.
It turns out that duck hunters are permitted to stalk the Belle Isle Marsh just beyond a Logan runway under Colonial-era ordinances governing public use of tidal areas, a quirk in the law that shocked East Boston bird-watcher George Cumming.
Cumming has been taking his camera out to Belle Isle Marsh for some 30 years, and he is usually the only soul in the area during the winter months. So when he saw a man last week wearing camouflage gear without binoculars or a camera, he became suspicious. When he spotted the makeshift hunting blind set up on the marsh, he knew hunters were in the area.
"We've heard shotgun sounds out in the marsh from time to time, and occasionally you can find discarded shotgun shells," he said. "Where they had pitched the blind is directly beneath the path of oncoming planes landing."
A pair of the airport's runways sit about a half-mile away from the marsh.
Cumming knows the planes overhead are flying low. A few years ago he suggested that a nearby platform for ospreys be moved because one of the birds was struck by a plane. "A fairly healthy Little League pitcher could bounce a baseball off the bottom of a plane," he said.
He snapped some pictures of the hunters and called police. Certainly this was illegal, he assumed.
As it turns out, the hunters were probably within their rights. State regulations banning hunting in urban parks and Boston's local ordinance prohibiting discharging a firearm in the city under most circumstances are trumped by an obscure Colonial-era state ordinance dating to the 1640s that governs public use of tidal areas, said Lisa Capone, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Energy and Environmental affairs.
Colonial legislators who wanted to encourage private wharf construction decreed that coastal landowners also owned the land between their property and the low-water mark. But they said the public retained the right to use the intertidal area, the area between low tide and high tide, for "fishing, fowling, and navigating."
"It would be considered allowable under that provision," Capone said of duck hunting at the marsh.
Ruben Perez, a duck hunter and guide from Seekonk, said he knows the state law well and has hunted at Belle Isle Marsh before.
"People have been hunting there for forever," he said. "A lot of people don't understand that it's in the Massachusetts Charter. You have the right to fish, fowl, duck-hunt, and collect seaweed along the coastline of Massachusetts."
Still, there are some restrictions on duck hunting, based on proximity to buildings and roadways.
Capone said the Massachusetts Environmental Police, which enforces hunting laws, did receive a report on Saturday of duck hunters in the marsh, but the hunters were gone by the time officers arrived, so they could not determine whether the activity was legally protected.
Logan Airport security officials are aware of the hunters and don't view the activity as a threat to air safety, said TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis.
"We are not concerned hunters' firearms could be used against aircraft," Davis said.
"I'm flabbergasted," said Cumming, who also is active with the organization Friends of Belle Isle Marsh. "It goes against common sense that you would allow that sort of thing to go on in a place that's so very close to people, activity, and especially the airport."
Perez said it is not surprising that a bird watcher would object to duck hunters.
"He's trying to use any kind of means to stop people that are doing an activity that they enjoy doing that conflicts with an activity that he likes to do," Perez said. He called the suggestion that duck hunters could be a threat to air safety "silly."
"A shotgun pellet does not have any kind of impact beyond 100 yards," Perez said.
While the duck hunters do not concern authorities, they are furiously searching for whoever was behind the possible bottle rocket that an Air Wisconsin pilot said nearly clipped an aircraft's wing on Saturday afternoon.
Air Wisconsin spokeswoman Barb Jones said the first officer on Flight 4080 from Philadelphia to Boston noticed something that looked like a model airplane or rocket nearly strike the plane's right wing upon approach to Logan. After a walk-around, authorities determined that nothing had struck the plane, but State Police are investigating the incident.
Trooper Eric Benson, a State Police spokesman, said investigators are focusing on the Winthrop and Revere area. He said there is no indication that the report of duck hunters and the pilot's report are connected.
John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com. 