Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Bird populations, what happened to all the birds?

university studies 40 years ago indicated feral cats killed approximately 250,000 songbirds per county in wi.

the habitat now has a lot of hawks, though at times of the year. also, no killing of racoon, opossum, bobcat and fox which decimate ground nesting birds. when a migrating hawk or gang of barn owels finds a covey of quail they stay there until all are gone.

I'm not talking about the 50s, I'm talking about the 80s. We had just as many of all those things then as we do now.

it's not chuck full of dove like it was 45-50 years ago. when i was a kid and went to east texas to hunt the timbered river bottoms for deer and ducks and squirrel for te holiday,the birds would be migrating south. it was a sight to see several thousand birds in a flock moving throught the forest while feeding. there would be robins, cardinals, jays, and some kind of woodpeckers. the sound was amazing and you couldn't sucessfully squirrel hunt as there were flickers of motion everywhere. as you walked through, the robins would gently move out of your way after you got within about 10 feet and woud seemingly pay you no mind. maybe pesticides, huge cities converted wooded areas, tons of house cats and now millions of hawks have taken a toll.

There are a thousand times more raptors now than there were in the 1980s.

you got that right.

yea, and what do those "biolosists" tell you about hawks. nothing. years ago in texas they did a study about water turkey eating bass. they had held that the no's eaten were negligable. the results were so astounding they wouldn't release the esults untill compelled to by court order. they massacre bass by the thousnads daily. now those same preservationists ('biologists') have stopped alligator gar killing. the only reason we have bass now is because most throw them back. biologists have spent 30 years and millions trying to bring back the muleys in the sac. mountains of n mexico. they haven't succeded. they ad been sa thick they had doe season, but after the fall of coyote fur and protection of cougars the deer are all but gone except in towns where there is some protection. biologists eat crap, imo

I have not seen a Ruff Grouse on my property in 35 years. I got plenty of White Tails, Turkeys Grey Squirrels. In the last year, Rabbits have been around. The first I seen in about 30 years. Quail, have not seen or heard one in decades. We have lots of geese around. But that is about it. Now we have raptors, its common to see Red Tail Hawks Eagles and Owls on a regular basis. I miss not having Grouse around, but back when we did, White Tails were few and far between. Turkeys, you went to the super market for those. Land Use along with farming practices have changed. In CT Pheasants are put and take stocking, you buy tags for that. Its not like going to South Dakota in October. We have some Doves but no season. For a Bird Hunter it seems like you have to go to Argentina for that. Then again you would shoot more birds in a Morning than most would shoot in a life time in the States.

Yep, JB... We see the same thing here. Good healthy lecks and surrounding sage are no longer holding the sage grouse. Habitat is shrinking, but not nearly as fast as the bird populations. Last year was the first since 1955 that I didn't shoot at least one sagehen, and it wasn't for lack of trying.

Our raptor population here is about the same as it always was, but the game birds are crashing, especially sagehen. Explain that away and blame the hawks...

They're finding West Nile in scads of dead sagehen here. Blame it on hawks...or George Bush...or whatever...

Widespread use of herbicides... when round-up hit $10/ gallon in generic form (glyphosate AI), it became very popular and is sprayed on hundreds of thousands of acres land to kill vegetation. I think the green stuff is gone, the bugs are gone, and the birds are now gone...

I gotta agree with predacious birds being hard on our upland bird populations, at least here they are.

There are piles more Red tails, owls and smaller hawks than there ever has been. You will see more hawks on powerlines and poles than you will pheasants in ditches.

There is something to the herbicides too; when I was growing up I dug tons of milkweeds and thistles. They were all over.

You don't even see a one in a ditch anymore, hardly ever...

If its one things or many, ain't none good!

We haven't had any real quail population in most parts of west texas for 5 years or so. They just disappeared.

Still a lot of dove and pheasants and tons of geese and ducks.

they have no hunting for prarie chicken in new mexico, texas coastal bend and west texas and try to study them. they are just a dinner for a hawk. our forefathers used to shoot hawks on sight fr a reason. ther's no farmland in most this prarie country. we could probably have more song birds if we controlled english sparrows,also.

I noticed a big increase in the number of songbirds around here the year I got my first hearing aids.
True.