Populations of Some U.S. Birds Said Down

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2007/jun/14/061407086.html

The populations of nearly two dozen common American birds - including the fence-sitting meadowlark, the frenetic Rufous hummingbird and the whippoorwill with its haunting call - are half what they were 40 years ago, a new analysis found.

The northern bobwhite and its familiar wake-up whistle once seemed to be everywhere in the East. Last Christmas, volunteer bird counters could find only three of them and only 18 Eastern meadowlarks in Massachusetts.

Twenty different common bird species - those with populations more than half a million and covering a wide range - have seen populations fall at least in half since 1967, according to a study by the National Audubon Society. The bird group compared databases for 550 species from two different bird surveys: its own Christmas bird count and the U.S. Geological Survey's breeding bird survey in June.

Some of the birds, such as the evening grosbeak, used to be so plentiful that people would complain about how they crowded bird-feeders and finished off 50-pound (22.7-kilogram) sacks of sunflower seeds in just a couple days. But the colorful and gregarious grosbeak's numbers have plummeted 78 percent in the past 40 years.

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[obxhead]

1. My Father mentioned this a couple of years ago....

He told me how he remembers huge flocks of birds when he was younger.

It's amazing how destructive we (humans) are.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. CNN version ... Audubon: Common backyard birds becoming less common

By Marsha Walton
CNN

(CNN) -- Some of the most common birds seen and heard in American back yards are becoming a less frequent sight and sound in much of the United States, according to a study released by the National Audubon Society.

Twenty common birds -- including the northern bobwhite, the field sparrow and the boreal chickadee -- have lost more than half their populations in the past 40 years, according to the society's research.

"These populations are not yet on the endangered species list, but it is noteworthy, and we need to take steps to protect their habitat," said Carol Browner, Audubon chair and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

And like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, the health of a region's bird population is often a harbinger of the health of other wildlife and of human populations as well.

"The focus isn't really on what's happening to these 20 birds, but what's happening to their environment," said Greg Butcher, the society's conservation director.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/06/14/bird.decline/index.html

All the woods and fields where I went hiking as a kid are now subdivisions, growing nothing but near-monoculture, pesticide-laden grass and the occasional tree. There used to be cedar waxwings there.

[lapfog_1]

3. Who killed the dinosaurs...

WE DID!

along with the bees, and the fish, and almost everything else.

[juno jones]

4. Once in my life

I saw a huge migration like my father (who was born in Spoon, Co, IL in 1932) described. In oct. 1991, A friend and I watched a stream of migrating birds of several different species fill the sky outside of Jacksonville IL. It lasted for hours, we went home before it had finished. I have never seen that again, and it was not as dramatic as the blackening of the sky my father had described.

The loss of hedgerows to corporate cultivation, including wanton destruction of windbreaks for the sake of ethanol production, it all strips away the last bastions of birds...the bees, then the birds...