A Third of North America’s Birds Have Vanished
At first Adam Smith couldn’t believe his calculations. Then it sank in.
2.9 billion breeding birds disappeared since the early 1970s
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I've kept my birdfeeders full, put out water for them, kept many thorny bushes I'd rather remove bc the songbirds love to nest in them and I am still seeing a decline. Not in the number of total birds, but each year the diversity goes down. Less songbirds, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, more cowbirds, more blackbirds. It's alarming.
I realize this is just my backyard, but it's wierd seeing a mass extinction just...play out. Right in front of me.
Today I spent a few hours gathering the crapload of Nanking cherries that have ripened on my bushes. When we moved in, almost twenty years ago now, we used to call them bird berries because we didn't know they were edible, but the birds seemed to love them. It occurred to me today that I haven't seen a single bird eating them this year. Maybe the berries are plentiful everywhere, and they've just found other places to gather, but it was a sobering realization.
If it makes you feel better, my Evans cherries and Honeyberry harvests are completely gone this year. Birds got 'em all.
I put up 17 birdhouses around my property and have several birdfeeders and birdbaths out there to serve them, so it's probably my own fault. Though in my defense, I only have 17 birdhouses because I bought a table saw without a clear project in mind for it and wound up having to build them to justify it to myself. So it wasn't exactly premeditated.
That's great! I've been watching since I noticed the berries so ripe, and I actually saw a red-headed finch in the yard today for the first time in years, so hope isn't lost.
More starlings for us 😒