Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Declining Bird Populations ? More Climate Change Bullschitt ?

Around in Colorado they kill hundreds of birds with wind generators.

Its habitat.

In my lifetime I have noted a steep decline in Wood Thrushes in NY State, these are an easy one to remember as their songs in summer evenings of multiple layers of birds singing off into the distance was beautiful.

Some species as noted have increased. In some of those same areas where wood thrushes have declined others, like the Cerulean Warbler, a tiny bird that winters in cloud forests in Ecuador but which breeds in mature forests have increased locally where the forests have aged.

But, there's choke points where migrants can be counted in a broad sense, like the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts, also can be estimated by radar returns, and yes numbers overall are seriously down, not all individual species, and a few have increased in some areas, but overall numbers are down in a big way as compared to my youth..

Most likely, as noted, habitat loss in the Tropics.

In the specific case of chimney swifts, possibly fewer chimneys, seems like most folks cover their chimneys now. In some case they hear swifts and think they are bats.

Pesticides Gus, also windows, cats, and changing habitat.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/scie...america-since-1970/ar-AAHxTY3?li=BBnba9O





https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...tions-are-plummeting-and-why-it-matters/

some of the more "mystical" believers who walk among us believe that the migratory neo-tropical songbirds have the job of awakening the climate and the trees as they migrate northward each year.

they send signals to the trees to awaken, and begin a new season of bloom, and leaves and growth.

i've never seen a conclusive refutation of that theory, belief, or likely responsibility of the songbirds.

of course in modern day science we have no possible way of confirming this view of nature.

Oh yes. The holy grail of all things bad.

I think some may have awakened your weed.

What awakens the trees on the equator.

So, what were chimney swifts called before humans built them chimneys?

Really, decline in chimney swifts because people cover their chimneys???? C’mon.

Bird sayin’ lets go live somewhere else! Hey them mud swallows look like they got a good gig going on!!!

Like people using sweet & low in hummingbird feeders. So the birds won’t get fat! LOL!

"weed" in georgia is very closely regulated, and doesn't allow for any illegalities.

on the equator, we have a constant 24 hour day divided into increments.

when the earth shifts on it's axis, perhaps due to the space aliens living on the moon,

then the migratory birds begin to respond to orders.

what we've got here is a dilemma, and it's certainly worth talking about.

we use to have bob white quail, about every where. but none now.

feral cats, hawks, possums, land-use changes? some combination?

We used to have quail here too




But I’m a bad ass quail killer with my trusty model 12. No more quail!

Careful Squidge, some of this is junk science

I think this is a central point. Forests age, and nothing can stop that short of destruction. So, a certain amount of change in the environment is inevitable (and there are many, many more things that change in nature than just the age of a forest), and that means there is a dynamic. There is no static balance of nature, and expecting demanding to see that will necessarily lead one to believe that catastrophe is upon us.

Fire ants are one big reason for the decline of the quail populations in the southern U.S.

Invasive European bird species taking over songbird’s nests have probably had a pretty big effect on that population. But I’ll defer to Birdwatcher’s opinion and see what he has to say about that.

Wind turbines, from studies I’ve seen have not had a significant effect.

But I still call Bullschitt on “climate change”.

Swifts nested in hollow trees, of which there were several in old growth forests, especially sycamores, which folks regularly used as temporary or even long-term shelters back then. Heck, how many Daniel Boone era stories of bears climbing up into tree cavites and such? Vaux's Swift, its nearly identical cousin on the West Coast, STILL nests mostly in hollow trees. Chimney Swifts themselves still roost en mass in hollow trees in the rain forests on the lower Eastern Slopes of the Andes.

A kazillion chimney swifts and no one knew where they wintered for decades, they all just disappeared into South America, 'till one day in the 1960's a Missionary in remote Peru encountered an Indian with two little silver bands in his headress, turns out they had been put on a swift in Massachusetts. In the rain forest the swifts roost in big numbers in hollow trees, the Indians light a fire at the base and collect 'em to eat when they come tumbing down.

On a different note, before humans started putting up barns everywhere, barn swallows were rare and local, limited to areas with caves and rock overhangs, hard to imagine today.

But..... tho every species is different, taken overall the number of migrant songbirds going south and then coming back north is but a fraction of what it was, even in my own lifetime.

we have chimney swifts every yr here at the house.

Some of the problem stems from the recovery of birds of prey. perhaps thought should be given that maybe the #'s are just balancing out.

Only two such invasives take over nesting cavities; house sparrows and starlings. Fortunately most North American songbird species don't nest in cavities and are therefore unaffected by these invaders.

The hardest hit has been the Eastern Bluebird, but while the bluebird is uncommon to rare most places because of this, what populations that are left have been pretty stable.

House Sparrows and Starlings are mostly limited to landscapes actively managed by humans. This is why a bunch of other cavity nesting species such as Western and Mountain Bluebirds, Chickadees, Titmice, Nuthatches, Violet-green Swallows and Tree Swallows are still common most places.

For songbirds that would be the Cooper's Hawk, now the most common hawk in many areas tho not nearly so visible as red-tails and such because most of the time they stay hidden in the canopy. An average pair of Cooper's prob'ly takes about 100 robin-sized birds in a month during the breeding season, prob'ly half that a month the rest of the year. But a whole bunch of warblers are too small to be bothered much by Coops and their numbers are plunging too. Also, in historical times before settlers with firearms killed off a multitude of hawks the annual deluge of songbirds on migration was much greater than it is today.

We have eastern bluebirds that nest in our yard every year, the previous owners put up bluebird boxes and they are well used. The darners (large dragonflies) are starting to migrate, lots of them flying around our place for the last several days.

Green Darner and American Kestrel Migration

Great link tks.

Purple Martins are high altitude dragonfly specialists, so many insects fly south over the Gulf in late summer/early fall that they show up as clutter on radar. Outside of the breeding season the whole Eastern Purple Martin population gathers into a few enormous flocks so dense that when they tornado in a huge swarm down to roost in a patch of trees branches may break under their weight.

They follow the dragonfly swarms south and spend the winter moving about in huge flocks high over the Tropics following dragonfly swarms. In places like Sao Paolo, Brazil they are actually considered a major pest because of the mess and smell their densely packed winter roosting sites create.

On the plus side, these huge winter roost sites in Brazil also draw in Arctic Peregrines.

And everyone thinks Purple Martins eat mosquitoes 🙂