'Common' birds vanishing in U.S., study finds

[Dover]

As Technological civilization diminishes the biotic diversity of the earth, language itself is diminished. As there are fewer and fewer songbirds in the air, due to the destruction of their forests and wetlands, human speech loses more and more of its evocative power. For when we no longer hear the voices of warbler and wren, our own speaking can no longer be nourished by their cadences. As the splashing speech of the rivers is silenced by more and more dams, as we drive more and more of the land's wild voices into the oblivion of extinction, our own languages become increasingly impoverished and weightless, progressively emptied of their earthly resonance.

-- from The Spell Of The Sensuous by David Abram

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'Common' birds vanishing in U.S., study finds.
Populations of meadowlarks, whippoorwills declined by half over last 40 years

By SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press

'Common' birds disappearing WASHINGTON — The populations of 20 common American birds — from the fence-sitting meadowlark to the whippoorwill with its haunting call — are half what they were 40 years ago, according to an analysis released Thursday.

Suburban sprawl, climate change and other invasive species are largely to blame, said study author Greg Butcher of the National Audubon Society.

"Most of these we don't expect will go extinct," he said. "We think they reflect other things that are happening in the environment that we should be worried about."

Last month a different group of researchers reported that seven species had dramatically declined because of West Nile virus. The species harmed by West Nile are different from those listed in the new study — except for the little chickadee, hard-hit on both lists.

Many of the species listed as declining in the new study depend on open grassy habitats that are disappearing, said Butcher, Audubon's bird conservation director...>

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/4891990.html

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In the wood, God was manifest, as he was not in the sermon. In the cathedralled arches the ground-pine crept him, the thrush sung him, the robin complained him, the cat-bird mewed him, the anemone vibrated him, the wild apple bloomed him; the ants built their little Timbuctoo wide abroad; the wild grape budded; the rye was in the blade; high overhead, high over cloud, the faint, sharp-horned moon sailed steadily west through fleets of little clouds; the sheaves of birch brightened into green below. The pines kneaded their aromatics in the sun. All prepared itself for the warm thunder-days of July.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, excerpted from The Laws of Nature

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you — know that the morning and spring of your life pulse are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

— Henry David Thoreau, from Thoreau and the Art of Life


Read additional excerpts from The Laws of Nature
and from Thoreau and the Art of Life



Tent tethered among jackpine and blue-
bells. Lacewings rise from rock
incubators. Wild geese flying north.
And I can't remember who I'm supposed
to be.

—Robert MacLean

[Bozita]

1. And I've yet to see a honeybee.

Honeybees made my lilacs a focal point in years past. Not this time.

White clover is always a magnet for the bees. No more.

[emilyg]

2. My yard

I have 2 feeders set-up. This year mostly inactive. I miss their sweet songs.

[struggle4progress]

3. Common yard birds disappearing in Oregon

The Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. — ~snip~

The meadowlark — the state bird — has nearly vanished as grassland habitat gives way to housing and parking lots.

The rufous hummingbird that winters in Mexico but returns to the wooded Northwest to breed has declined 79 percent in Oregon over the past 40 years. Even the familiar red-breasted robins have declined nearly 3 percent per year in the Portland metro area over the same period. ~snip~

The decline can also be blamed on urban predators such as house cats raiding nests and wide use of pesticides that kills the insects birds eat, biologists said. ~snip~

"You don't necessarily see their declines, because they're still so common, but just because they're around doesn't mean they're doing well," said Lori Hennings, a natural resources scientist with the regional planning agency Metro, who has long studied Portland birds and tracks their numbers in the Portland area using some of the same survey results. ~snip~

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003750758_weboregonbirds16.html