At first Adam Smith couldn’t believe his calculations. Then it sank in.

2.9 billion breeding birds disappeared since the early 1970s

  • FollyDolly@lemmy.world
    34·
    1 year ago

    I’ve kept my birdfeeders full, put out water for them, kept many thorny bushes I’d rather remove bc the songbirds love to nest in them and I am still seeing a decline. Not in the number of total birds, but each year the diversity goes down. Less songbirds, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, more cowbirds, more blackbirds. It’s alarming.

    I realize this is just my backyard, but it’s wierd seeing a mass extinction just…play out. Right in front of me.

    • CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one
      7·
      1 year ago

      Today I spent a few hours gathering the crapload of Nanking cherries that have ripened on my bushes. When we moved in, almost twenty years ago now, we used to call them bird berries because we didn’t know they were edible, but the birds seemed to love them. It occurred to me today that I haven’t seen a single bird eating them this year. Maybe the berries are plentiful everywhere, and they’ve just found other places to gather, but it was a sobering realization.

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
        4·
        1 year ago

        If it makes you feel better, my Evans cherries and Honeyberry harvests are completely gone this year. Birds got 'em all.

        I put up 17 birdhouses around my property and have several birdfeeders and birdbaths out there to serve them, so it’s probably my own fault. Though in my defense, I only have 17 birdhouses because I bought a table saw without a clear project in mind for it and wound up having to build them to justify it to myself. So it wasn’t exactly premeditated.

        • CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one
          1·
          1 year ago

          That’s great! I’ve been watching since I noticed the berries so ripe, and I actually saw a red-headed finch in the yard today for the first time in years, so hope isn’t lost.

  • Holodeck_Moriarty@lemm.ee
    19·
    1 year ago

    I’ve seen similar posts about how pesticides and landscaping and such have killed a huge portion of the bugs. Could this be because their food source has been diminished?

  • danhasnolife@lemmy.world
    8·
    1 year ago

    We are fortunate enough to have a large bank barn that has been a barn swallow nesting ground for years. Although we use the top floor and seal it off, we leave a gate open for the swallows in the ground level every year. It’s a joy to see 50+ of them on the telephone line in late summer.

    This year our flock is significantly smaller, and two of them didn’t make it. Hopefully just a one-year anomaly, but deep down I doubt it.

  • Raphael@lemmy.world
    83·
    1 year ago

    America hates communism so much they couldn’t even bother leaning Mao’s biggest mistake.

    They also hate science. Good luck.

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
    5·
    1 year ago

    I was just saying to my wife yesterday that I’ve been seeing a fraction of the wildlife I was seeing just last year. I used to see foxes and coyotes every time I went out, and I’ve only seen maybe 3 this year. Many of the birds that would be abundant are simply not there.

    Even when looking back at photos we took a decade ago, the diversity in birds was incredible no matter where you went. Now, only geese, gulls, and a few common birds here and there.

    Reading that article makes me incredibly sad. I can’t imagine a world without the songs of birds filling the air.

  • burntbutterbiscuits@sh.itjust.works
    41·
    1 year ago

    Nah, there is no mass extinction event. It’s just that the government has been funding more r&d for more reliable drones with upgraded hardware and better features, these newer drones are more expensive to maintain so there are less of them

    (Birds aren’t real). /s