There Goes the Neighborhood

Our planet has lots of open spaces where people could live, but theses spaces are mountains, deserts, salt flats, and other places where people just don’t want to live. If people don’t live there, then businesses don’t start there, there’s no reason to look for jobs there, and so on. We cluster around lakes, oceans, valleys, forests, and rivers. So what does that do to the fauna living in those nice places?

We build huge tracts of houses with shiny windows. Birds see a rival in the glass, and attack. And give themselves brain damage. A friend told me he had his windows cleaned and almost immediately birds started crashing into the glass. He sent me photos of two dead birds and one stunned in hopes the club could identify them. We did. The dead birds were Phoebes, a bird that lives around here in pretty good numbers. They are territorial so no doubt tried to attack the rivals that wouldn’t be scared off. The other bird was a Pine Siskin, a rare spotting here.

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Phoebes and lucky Pine Siskin

Is this the fault of the birds or the humans? The birds were here first, but judging by how American Indians were treated, that won’t sway anyone. Humans will take what they need in the moment with little concern for the future. Check out the rain forests around the world, check out the waters where oil is being pumped. Check out countries that are at war for no reason that would benefit the people and see what living conditions are like there for humans and animals.

According to the study called “Decline of the North American Avifauna” in the journal, Science, “Birds are excellent indicators of environmental health and ecosystem integrity.” Because they can be monitored over a wide swath of country, we get the best information from monitoring them. And the radar tracking of migratory birds shows we have lost 29% of our birds since 1970. One of the warning signs of immanent extinction is a loss in abundance of individuals. If 29% doesn’t sound like a lot to you, think of it as nearly 3 million breeding individuals.

Windows kill birds

The decline, as I am sure you know, is due to all the usual suspects. Climate change, as we have seen, has pushed snowy owls farther south, mountain blue birds out of the highlands, and coastal shorebirds have lost more than one third of their population. Habitat destruction and degradation, not just building more human habitat where the wild fauna once roamed, but also planting an overabundance of lawn. There is almost nothing in grass for birds to eat. And unregulated harvesting can be detrimental to a wide variety of life, like river otters in Kentucky, medicinal golden seal, and oysters. It plays in to the habitat loss and degradation, especially where trees are concerned.

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Lawns, logging, and farming can hurt birds

This situation is so simple. Make the world hotter or colder, or both, take away places for the fauna to live and eat, and ignore the effects of pesticide and other easily overturned problems, and the creatures we love will die. Ultimately, we need to take any steps we can to reverse our course.

Linda Larson of the Times Writer Group published a wonderful article in the SC Times. The title is We Can Save the Birds, and includes a list from Cornell Labs of 7 suggestions of things you can do, we all can do, to improve our situation.

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Song Birds

1. Make windows safer. Birds see the reflection, not the window. Cornell Lab estimates up to 1 billion birds a year die from flying into windows. (Use decals that keep people from walking through glass doors, too.)
2. Keep cats indoors. Cornell Lab estimates 2.6 billion birds a year die from outdoor cats, especially feral ones.
3. Reduce lawn, plant natives. Who wants to mow more lawn? Birds eat nectar, seeds, fruit and berries from plants and trees.
4. Avoid pesticides. The same pesticides that hurt bees hurt birds, too.
5. Drink shade-grown coffee. Shade-grown coffee preserves habitats for birds.
6. Use less plastic. Seabirds mistake plastic for food.
7. Watch birds and share what you see. The final suggestion is to observe and report, perhaps as part of the Christmas Bird Count or an online project called eBird.

The 2020 Christmas Bird Count is not accepting any new circles but you might find one near you that is accepting members. I’ll be publishing more information next month of the February 2021 Bird Count.

We can do this. We simply need to care and to act. Thanks for reading, I’ll be back next Sunday.

I Could Use an Avian Love Potion Number 9 (Also, Happy Holidays!)

We are only a few weeks, maybe a month, away from breeding season. I’m excited to see how my canaries will do. The Fifes, Barney and Thelma Lou are squabbling, right on schedule, and when I get the maintenance done for them, I will be giving them a nest and keeping my fingers crossed. The same for the Irish Fancies, Molly and Miles.

Fall in Love with Coturnix Quail

I accidentally adopted a coturnix quail from the local humane society. The photo they posted of him was a head shot. You really can’t tell buttons from coturnix without a size reference and a full body shot. They has also listed him as female, and named him Butternut. When they brought him out and I saw that he was several times bigger than my buttons, I said nothing. I knew I was about to start a new adventure.

Musical Cages

The Outside birds have been moved around recently to stop them from being picked on and to try to prevent rodent attacks. I’ll start at the beginning, shall I? If I can just remember who I moved first. I had a cage empty because I wanted to bring the red rumps out, but we waited too long, the weather was too cold, and so they are on hold for a year.