Longtime bird enthusiast takes stock of sobering declines
By John Thaxton
My mother always assured me that what I worried about most would never happen, and so I got into the habit of worrying about things I really enjoyed suddenly vanishing.
And as I started to become increasingly obsessed with watching birds I became increasingly obsessed with worrying that they would suddenly and precipitously decline. I relaxed about bird declines for quite a while, especially since my wife and I bought land and built a house in Keene, on the eastern side of Baxter Mountain at an elevation of about 2,000 feet. We would wake up in our tent on the property and smile at the songs of black-throated blue, black-throated green and Blackburnian warblers, and smile at the teacher-teacher-teacher shrieks of the ovenbirds.
This year, for the first time in 37 years, we don’t have any of these birds on our property and we feel, in three words, completely bummed out about the development. I remember smiling at the song of the black-throated blue right outside the kitchen window, the singing Blackburnian in the treetops right off the deck and the ovenbird holding forth at the turn in the driveway.
All of these songs and the birds that made them have disappeared from our property and one of the things I worried about most has happened. My mother, as usual, got just about everything wrong.
Many of the most steeply declining species include common birds like blackbirds, sparrows and finches. In just 50 years, for example, red-winged blackbirds have declined from 260 million to 150 million, and grassland species have declined by 53% or approximately 750 million birds.
North America hosts 3 billion fewer nesting birds since 1970, a heart-stopping decline in avian populations.
I never like to make a point by summoning statistics, but the numbers make my head spin and the sheer absence of bird song on a spring morning dampens my spirit before I even get out of bed. I remember waking up in Manhattan to the sounds of car alarms, honking horns and low-flying jets coming in for a landing at Kennedy International Airport, and I remember swooning with pleasure in the Adirondacks when an ovenbird woke me up.
Ovenbirds, black-throated blue and black-throated green warblers don’t wake me up anymore, and I genuinely worry about their status as breeding species in the Adirondacks. I could go on and on about the species that have declined since I moved here and about the lack of bird song everywhere I go, but the bottom line remains the same, and it’s depressing: Bird populations are declining and will no doubt continue to do so.
I harbor a background wish that maybe I have it all wrong, that perhaps what I see as a precipitous decline in bird species doesn’t really fly, but in my heart of hearts I know that Adirondack bird species populations have plummeted, and I groan every time I think about it.
Thank you. Over the past 20 years the morning cacophony of song birds on our property has become decidedly more faint. Our birdboxes were always full, now many are empty. The message is clear: We have met the enemy and he is us – Pogo, 1970.
Here on the Adirondack Coast, TOTAL numbers of birds on my property haven’t really declined noticeably, but I would guess the bird species diversity has been halved over the last 20 years. Warblers, thrushes, swallows, and finches are a rarity now – not to mention bats. I believe it is due in part to changes in insect populations, but hard to really how many other things are contributing. I was just thinking about Silent Spring the other day sitting on my porch in the evening being serenaded by absolutely nothing. Distressing.
Well, your mom may have been right about a few things – let’s allow for the jury to be out on that one.
But you’re not wrong at all that birds are declining this year and generally due a number of factors. Around the Boston area we’re having a bad year for West Nile, which may be a factor here.
There is also a “mysterious illness” in the mid Atlantic that I read about the other day. But all of these phenomena are a symptom of (again, I sound like a broken record) the climate and other ecosystems crises that we are indeed inflicting upon ourselves.
But should we just worry? Throw up our hands and condemn humanity? Of course not – there’s too much to save. If you’re concerned about this stuff, please plug into the movements that are working to save our ecosystems. I promise it will make you feel better, and help the birds too!
Vanessa B,
What concerns me the most is the lack of any reporting on the issue. Many people are noticing changes. I imagine studies are underway, but more news coverage would be helpful. Honey bees got a lot of press – how about birds? Thanks to John and AE, we at least got some notice here of late.
I’ll be the bad guy here and state that, along with human causes of climate change and other factors, building a house at 2000′ may be part of the problem. The footprint you leave is WAY bigger than than your house….but its only 1 house, you say. But the reality is death by a thousand [individual] cuts each of whom say, but it’s only 1 house.
i have noticed from my childhood to now about 100x reduction in birds at my feeders, same location since my childhood, my parents fed birds year round and winter, there would be sometimes literally 1,000 plus birds in yard and driveway/feeders. flocks of blue jays 50 strong, dozen cardinals, and huge variety of bird species.
every morning during season 25-35 barn swallows on the phone wires chittering away at dawn.
That is all memories and pictures now.
i think it has many reasons, pollution, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides all used in massive amounts building up in enviroment, food contaminated, insects trickling up the food chain. all the smaller animals like birds and bats, mice, snakes have mostly disappeared. so many more cars, trucks on the road by the millions, how many birds get hit a year.
the list of birds i don’t see is much much longer than those i do see now. that is scary that almost all the vast numbers and species are basically gone. and it’s not just birds….notice you almost never see a dead porcupine either along roads either?
nathan,
I agree. This is the proverbial frog in hot water story. Petrochemical giants and politicians in their pockets do a lot to minimize press exposure to these issues. Something rarely mentioned is hidden microplastic pollution, which also contaminates the food chain in ways we don’t even realize yet. It seems people, press, government, and industry only have direct human safety in mind. Obviously, this is both myopic and stupid. Humans will not survive without a healthy environment. It isn’t rocket science.
Micro-plastics are a very growing concern. There was a great article in consumer reports about the plastics in our modern food packaging alone. that when plastics are made~there also results nano-plastic so small that they can literally pass into our brains and inside cells…that so much plastic exposure in food packaging, people can literally be eating a credit cards worth of plastic a month….that plastic is building in every level of our enviroment, soils, fresh water, oceans of course.. it has to be reaching down to water tables by now.
every store has shelves of sprays, from antibacterial, to kill bugs, mold, ect. spread on the lawn, spray around house, inside house, our food plots, fields…most of those chemicals only dilute for a 100 years, just as road salt is poisoning our wells, those organic poisons are there building up in our food, water, air and bodies. If a chemical kills something, it has to have long term effects on all living things..as a rule small animals are affected more than larger animals. If all the birds, rodents, snakes, amphibians, insects are disappearing. when are we next?? look up fertility rates in humans over last 50 years and birth defect rates….warning its not good news. once those pollutions are in our ground, water/air..you cannot just get rid of those poisons, its there just like an invasive species!
BTW keep buying all those spring water bottles and drinking up, each bottle is contaminated with nano-plastic and microscopic bits of plastic. thousands of itsy bitsy pieces in every bottle…How healthy is that spring water? how many a month do you ingest? What does nanoplastic do inside cells, body, brain, nerves, eyes? No one has really fully researched it!! Does it interfer with cellular processes? DNA replication errors? Cellular division issues? Cancers? Concentrate toxins, release toxins, reduce body ability to get rid of toxins, poisons?