Gregory's Server@Sheril @lisamelton even then this is only counting deaths by direct physical cause. The amount bird populations have dropped due to habitat loss and failed nests due to intensive farming and fishing destroying nest sites and decimating their prey, probably dwarfs even the toll from cats (who are mostly an urban phenomenon) and is the background that makes these other causes significant at all.
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 @StrangeNoises @Sheril @lisamelton Ornithologists agree. US has lost 3 billion birds in the last half century. Cornell University says that our bird population has fallen by 30% since 1970.  @Barbramon1 @StrangeNoises @Sheril @lisamelton  @oclsc @Barbramon1 @Sheril @lisamelton they can't both be right can they? I suspect the latter is a vast underestimate, but i also look askance at the former, frankly. Here in the UK naturalists are talking about many species having lost more like 90% (ninety percent) of their numbers over a few decades. And they squarely blame intensive farming, and the other thing we don't talk enough about, the absolute insect apocalypse that's going on. @oclsc @Barbramon1 @Sheril @lisamelton i mean, we tend to notice the loss of insect life only in positive terms; how our cars aren't plastered with their bodies along the front after a long journey, fewer flies invading the house this summer, that sort of thing. But it's a vast disaster, and the birds are - very nearly literally - the canaries in that coalmine. @oclsc @Barbramon1 @Sheril @lisamelton also to be remembered: Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Every generation (in the last century or two) has witnessed a decline, but we think of how nature was when we were growing up to be normal, and the written accounts of its huge, vast, abundance say a couple of hundred years ago barely seem credible. @oclsc @Barbramon1 @Sheril @lisamelton cats hunting birds in suburban gardens would be a rounding error if it wasn't for the wider environmental holocaust going on. they can be killing that many more birds than windfarms and still be a scapegoat to distract you from the real problem. |
@StrangeNoises Particulate pollution from burning stuff can't help birds, either. I know nothing but imagine their lungs are pretty finely tuned by evolution in terms of optimising power/weight ratio, etc, so anything gumming them up is likely to have a disproportionate effect, more so than for ground animals where weight isn't quite so critical.
@Sheril @lisamelton