Birds are remarkable and beautiful animals - and they're disappearing from our world

[marmar]

(Guardian UK) When the poet Mary Oliver wrote “Instructions for living a life,” she reminded us: “Pay attention. Be astounded. Tell about it.”

This past autumn, wildlife officials announced that a bird, a male bar-tailed godwit, flew nonstop across the Pacific Ocean 8,100 miles from Alaska to Australia in just under 10 days. Fitted with a small solar-powered satellite tag, the godwit achieved “a land bird flight record”. But of course godwits have been doing this for centuries. Come next April-May, all things well, determined godwits will make the trip in reverse, bound for Alaska to nest and raise their young.

They won’t be alone.

Northern wheatears, songbirds less than six inches long, will arrive in Alaska from sub-Saharan Africa. Arctic terns will return from Antarctica, with each bird flying the equivalent of three trips to the moon and back in a single lifetime. Bar-headed geese will fly over the Himalayas at altitudes exceeding 20,000 feet.

....(snip)....

In the past half century, North America has lost more than one-fourth of its birds. Nearly everywhere, they are in decline. Massive die-offs of flycatchers, swallows, bluebirds, sparrows and warblers – described as thousands of birds “falling out of the sky” – have been recorded in recent years in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. Smoke from intense California fires forced tule geese to reroute their migration and take twice as long. Elsewhere, as birds lay their eggs earlier, due to a warming climate, more chicks die from sudden inclement weather events.

This is where we find ourselves, trapped in a diminished world of our own making. Today only 30% of all birds are wild; the other 70% are mostly poultry chickens. In essence, Earth is now a coalmine, and every wild bird is a canary – what ecologists call a “bio-indicator” – in that mine. .............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/28/birds-are-remarkable-and-beautiful-animals-and-theyre-disappearing-from-our-world

[samplegirl]

1. Interesting post

thanks for sharing.

[ItsjustMe]

2. Winged Migration

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301727/

It's a great documentary, check it out if you haven't seen it.

[GaYellowDawg]

3. Feral cats are the biggest killer of birds.

They need to be exterminated like any other invasive species. They kill billions of birds every year.

[link:https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380|

[I_UndergroundPanther]

5. TnR

Trap,Neuter Release.
The more the feral cats get sterilzed the less ferals there will be.

Don't kill cats. They kill mice and other pests too.


In the middle ages cats were murdered in massive numbers and the mice and rats overran everything. The fleas on the rats and mice gave people bubonic plague.

The birds get killed from industrial pollutants,smoke quite a bit,cell towers, wind propellers used to make green energy kill off a terrible amount of birds.

Alot of birds die from other things than cats.

[NickB79]

6. Kill the cats

TNR doesn't reduce cat populations except in rare circumstances.

In the meantime, birds are being wiped out because we put emotions over science. And without cats, native weasels and birds of prey would fill the niche and eat the rodents. Cats aren't needed in North America outside the home as indoor pets.

https://www.audubon.org/news/audubon-new-york-rallies-support-against-tnr-legislation

[I_UndergroundPanther]

8. You kill cats

Thats like killing birds because they shit on cars.


Do not kill cats.

If you kill cats you are commiting a felony.

And I will make damn sure you get arrested.

Kill narcissists instead.

And the 6th great extinction is started already.
We will be dead along with every creature on this planet.

From heat death where the wet bulb temperature will make us unable to lose heat by sweating. As the air conditioning fails because everyone is using AC to survive the all year round humid horrible summers.

[NickB79]

9. Australia is doing it right, through government action

They recognize the irreversible damage feral species do to their unique ecosystems, and are killing millions of feral cats.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat-killing.html

If the birds shitting on my car are native, I have no problem with them. I have converted my 2 acres to native plantings to foster native wildlife. Just because we're in a mass extinction event doesn't mean we give up and let them all die through our actions, such as introducing non-native invasives.

If you're so pessimistic about the future for wildlife, why do you care if feral cats are culled? They'll die just like other species when we pass wet bulb temps.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

10. Australia

Has stopped murdering cats. Figured out they serve a purpose.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210324-assisting-evolution-how-much-should-we-help-species-adapt


You must admit there are no longer any pristine environments left
of purely native species. Every ecosystem is fucked in some way or another.

[GaYellowDawg]

14. That is a complete misinterpretation of that article.

Australia hasn’t stopped killing cats. The article spotlights one researcher who has. Not the entire country, and the article didn’t posit that cats have a place in the ecosystem. The researcher is trying to find ways to alter the native animals to adapt to the invasive species before they’re annihilated by the feline scourge.

So you want to get on the soapbox about the environment and preach about the 6th extinction and climate change, until it comes to doing something that’s emotionally difficult for you - killing an introduced invasive species that you think is the most precious thing ever. Now you’re all “every ecosystem is fucked in some way or another” and you’re all about rationalizing just letting the cute kitties kill everything in sight.

“Every ecosystem is fucked in some way or another.” I’ve heard coal advocates say delightful things like that.

[GaYellowDawg]

13. Completely inapt analogy.

“That’s like killing birds because they shit on cars.”

Inapt, and stupid. Cars aren’t alive, and if they were, birds shitting on them wouldn’t kill them. In the meantime, cats, whether neutered/spayed or not, kill millions of birds.

No one is proposing to take your pwecious wittle kitteh from your arms, but you need to keep the goddamn thing inside where it can be a predator to its heart’s content. Feral cats, on the other hand, are an invasive species. It’s not a felony to kill feral cats, and you’re not getting anyone arrested.

It’s funny you bring up the 6th great extinction and climate change. You know why? Because those things have come about by billions of people doing exactly what you’re doing: ignoring what’s best for the environment for their convenience or personal agendas. Like your narcissistic attitude about you and your cats, where the birds they kill don’t really matter one bit to you.

[roamer65]

4. Too bad humans didn't suffer the same fate.

8 billion is too many.

Then maybe we will…

[NickB79]

7. Three C's: Crops, cats and climate

Habitat loss, due to monoculture farming.

Cats, as an invasive predator.

Climate change, destroying food and nesting habitat.

[Retrograde]

11. Plenty of crows around here

they're driven off the mockingbirds and most of the scrub jays. They fight with the red-tail hawks. I've even seen groups of them at the beach! (I dread a crow-sea gull alliance). IMHO, we're seeing the more specialized birds decline as they lose their habitats, while the more generalized ones are taking their places.

[VGNonly]

12. Silent Spring