https://www.theglobeandmail.com/tec...-15-billion-fewer-birds/article31876053/

From the article:
“North America has more than a billion fewer birds than it did 40 years ago, with the snowy owl and the chimney swift just two of the better-known species in dramatic decline across the continent, a recent survey has found.

The Partners In Flight report concludes that urbanization, growth in agriculture and possibly even climate change have driven the decline in North American landbird populations, a category that excludes ducks and other waterfowl.”

neotropical migratory songbirds have been taking it on the chin for a spell.

Loss of habitat due to too many people is the main cause.
Chimney Swifts need chimneys.
Most buildings no longer have them.

Too many damn cats. 😉

Millions have died due to wind turbines. The sudden drop in pressure from a fan passing in front of a bird ruptures vessels in their brain I've heard.

And hawks.

Wind power turbines kill. Reflections off solar panels disorientate.
Oh yeah, the sky is falling.

Those folks that wrote that need to come count doves in my back yard. Could probably shoot 10 limits in a day with the air rifle if I got desperate.

all cats should be kept inside, or on leash if outside.

time to crack down on exotic invasives.

Pesticides aren't helping either.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/birds-neonicotinoid-pesticides-farming-migration-delays

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...-used-pesticide-makes-birds-lose-weight/

Tell that to the Snow Geese.

i just hate it when feral cats disrupt the lifestyle of neo-tropical migratory songbirds.

the cat people are well entrenched, as are the dog people and horse people.

possums, raccoons, and foxes are natives. coyotes not so much.

our friends, the radical environmentalists know we have an issue.

You guys are old and out of touch. Feral cats got the blame way back when people laughed about "scientists" running around with their hair on fire over the coming age of glaciation. The generation Z meme is climate change and that is obviously the cause of every ill in the world.

we need an enemy that we can easily blame, assign credits for our dilemma.

cats, on leashes could go a long way in solving our bird population problem.

Most of the problem is habitat loss in Central and South America although that wouldn't apply to the Snowy Owl. It seems that climate change has usurped all other environmental issues to the point where they are hardly discussed.

Smart meters.

I've read that this same pressure drop phenomena affects bats in a big way. Lots die because of wind turbines.

I'm thinking the tons of granular fire ant bait used in central and southern Texas has had a devastating effect, Squidge.

I dont know if that's what is in anything you listed above.

a fall off in insect population might be a factor?

what could cause that, if anything?

surely humans are to be blamed?

i haven't seen a devil's horse this year.

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 🙂

They would have nested in hollow trees in old growth forests

Well, dang it all to hell. I learned something new again today.

Never knew dragonflies migrated. Just figured, like many insects with aquatic life stages, that the adults attempted to overwinter in vegetation or rock cavities and such, and the juveniles overwintered in the bottom mud or underwater vegetation.

Interesting stuff folks, thanks

Geno

PS, on a good note, we've seen a Stellar's Jay here the past couple of days. Scrub and pinyon are common. Stellar's are generally up the hill in the pine/fir forest around here. I'm thinking it's getting ready to go south, or perhaps hang around for the winter here on the sage flats and ranchlands.

Here where I live, we have a couple of Blue bird types, one bigger than the other, and those along with field Larks declined about the same time as the quail. All of these birds have made a large come back, but not the quail. I am still thinking West Nile Virus had a big hand in it. miles

I think you're right Miles. I think the cottonpoison got the quail. They were disappearing before the fireants got here.

Cool season grass fields over warm season grass really hurt quail. They can’t thrive in fescue.

Hmm.....news just reported 3.7 billion birds killed by cats every year.

I’m gonna get a cat and name it “global warming”

LOL! I know Snyper. I was just being my sarcastic self again!!

A 12 for tiny little tiny quails?

I thought 12s were for geese,Turkey, cranes, swans, chicken haw, uh, ducks, deer and dimocraps?

Model 12 Winchester! TC Johnson’s mechanical miracle for anything that flies!!!

My daughter is a senior in wildlife biology and what they have seen is tall buildings especially ones with a lot of glass are responsible for the deaths of literally millions of migratory song birds each year.

We have quite a few birds here now that were not around when I was growing up. Eagles (bald and golden) buzzards - ravens and quite a few smaller birds of different varieties. We have resident honkers that were never here in the winter a so many snow geese come through there is now a spring season. The only bird I notice that has been down in numbers for years now is our ruff grouse. Conditions here are about the same as 50 years ago but the ruffs have virtually disappeared. Edk

I'll bet there is quite a bit of truth to your daughter's findings. Last year, I lost at least a half dozen male cardinals who flew into my window glass and killed themselves. I blame myself to some degree, because the area around my cabin is littered with bird feeders that I keep filled with sunflower seeds throughout the winter to help the little critters out. So I'm sure I am attracting them to my little spot in the woods from miles around. I have walked outside on many a snowy winter morn to literally hundreds of birds, half of which I have to look up in the audubon book, just to see what they are. I tell myself the small loss of life is offset by the amount of birds that make it through the winter because of the buffet.

If I had to add to the list of culprits, I would say an unchecked raccoon population. I know they predate nests pretty hard. Their population in my neck of the woods is out of control.

As a matter of fact, I would say predators such as hawks, coyotes, and raccoons do more damage to the bird population, especially ground-nesters than probably anything else, save for maybe feral cats. That being said, we don't have too many feral cats running around where I live.

My wife put 2-3 inch strips of blue painters tape on a couple of our front windows. Not a single bird we know of flew into a window after that. Took some getting used too but it turned into a conversation piece when folks were visiting.

They must not be counting Eurasian Doves.

If the earth got warmer there would be more birds.

Wind turbines are the biggest killers of all birds. To save the planet, they slaughter birds on an industrial scale. But that's okay apparently.

Ill have to give that a try this year, thanks.

Do you just put a big "X" across the windows?

No just 2-3 inch strips of the thin painters tape ( I think the 3/4 inch wide stuff ) just scattered randomly across the inside of the window. I'd guess she probably put 12 or so of those pieces on each standard sized window.

Weather radar picks up gigantic swarm of dragonflies over parts of southeast U.S.