
Bird populations have declined since 1970 across nearly all habitats - emptybits
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silent-skies-billions-of-north-american-birds-have-vanished/
======
robocat
New Zealand used to have a dawn chorus of birds before it was settled by
Europeans.

"When Captain Cook came to the Queen Charlotte Sound in 1770, his botanist,
Joseph Banks, described the dawn chorus he heard in his journal. 'This morn I
was awakd by the singing of the birds ashore from whence we are distant not a
quarter of a mile, the numbers of them were certainly very great who seemd to
strain their throats with emulation perhaps; their voices were certainly the
most melodious wild musick I have ever heard, almost imitating small
bells....'.

The dawn chorus doesn't exist now for two reasons: forest was felled and
converted to farmland, and bird/egg eating mammals were introduced.

New Zealand is trying to stop the decline in our bird numbers and threatened
species, and we are even succeeding in small areas. We have been leading the
world at completely eradicating pests from some islands, and fencing off some
forest areas within our cities, and eradicating all mammals (rats/stoats/cats)
within them.

Fortunately New Zealand is quite progressive on environmental issues (although
we need to do way better), and about 5% to 10% of our parliament is the Green
Party (who regularly have real power by forming coalition governments or
strategic voting on bills). I think much of their policy is whacko, but as a
minority they work well to effect change and represent the large number of New
Zealanders that care deeply about our environment.

I like this summary [http://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/8206417/A-deafening-
dawn-ch...](http://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/8206417/A-deafening-dawn-chorus)
(although maybe stop reading when she starts rabbiting on about her rooster!).

~~~
jasonless
From what I can tell between 10,000 and 100,000 species are becoming extinct
each year. Maybe we should tax the rich to save them all? How can we save
100,000 each year. Do we think Capitalism is causing these extinction?

~~~
fennecfoxen
Broadly speaking, "people growing food" is causing these extinctions. Ending
capitalism might reverse these changes to the ecosystems, insofar as people
suffer mass starvation, are killed in revolutionary struggle / civil war, or
are exterminated by a dystopian post-capitalist state; aside from this you
should, broadly speaking, expect the inferior yields of collectivized
agriculture to worsen the environmental degradation (by requiring more
farmland), not improve it.

~~~
solotronics
Well if history is any measure the move away from capitalism will kill off a
good percentage of the population. So I guess from an ecological standpoint it
would be good to have a communist revolution every couple decades then quickly
go back to capitalism so the people left can live nice lives.

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diego_moita
There must be something more than habitat loss or pesticides.

Outside of Central Asia sparrows are introduced species, adapted to live on
remains of our towns. Urban environments is the natural habitat of sparrows,
like rats with wings. They don't belong to the wilderness. If sparrows are
also disappearing then the loss of natural habitat is not the only answer.

Edit: from this graph [0] it seems that the loss is concentrated on introduced
species (such as sparrows), shorebirds and insectivores.

[0][https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silent-skies-
bill...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silent-skies-billions-of-
north-american-birds-have-vanished/)

~~~
filboidstudge
It sounds like you are referring specifically to the House Sparrow (Passer
domesticus) which is not native to North America and is indeed strongly
associated with urban environments.[0] But the native New World sparrows to
which the article refers are a separate group of species and are dependent on
natural habitat.[1]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_sparrows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_sparrows)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_sparrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_sparrow)

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ridgeguy
Maybe not only birds.

Today, I drove home from Las Vegas to Portola Valley. I went 95->6->120 over
Tioga pass, then home.

I've driven this route over several decades. My recollection (corroborated by
a few Kodachrome slides) is that my windshield would be smeared with bug
impacts by the time I got to Lee Vining, necessitating a stop at the
humongously overpriced gas station so I could use their window cleaners. Since
about 15 years ago, not so much.

I had a total of three bugs at Lee Vining today. I bypassed the gas station
and window cleaning, went over Tioga.

If we're really missing the quantities of bugs my anecdote may illustrate,
it's no wonder the birds are missing, too.

~~~
bt848
Curious how many times you and millions of others thought you could slaughter
all those insects with your cars before it would harm them. Roads are one of
the main reasons for declining animal populations and insects are impacted as
much as or more than any animals.

~~~
dhhdhdsbdb
Is this true? I always thought the decline was more often caused by removing
habitats. Would be curious to know how this is measured and communicated.

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lettergram
Living in rural Illinois I can attest that bugs have pretty much vanished. You
used to be eaten alive outside, not so much near any crop fields (i.e. most of
the state). I never even get bit at night.

I’m sure that is the largest impact on birds, no food.

~~~
butterfi
Remember when you had to scrape your windshield down after a car trip? I
noticed the birds vanishing in my area, but I had no idea it was happening on
this scale.

~~~
lostapathy
A lot of that is aerodynamics improving in newer cars. I drive a Jeep Wrangler
and it catches a lot more bugs than our modern Honda

~~~
newnewpdro
I drive old cars, and have had the same exact model for over a decade, and
cross the country often between the west coast and midwest.

It used to be that I'd have to clean my windshield at gas stops and the car
would need its bumper and hood washed of insect genocide on arrival.

These days neither are necessary, it's _very_ apparent.

~~~
fingerlocks
You obviously haven’t driven through southern Oregon on highway 97 during
sunset. Had to use the windshield wipers because I couldn’t see from all the
bug carcasses on the windshield.

~~~
newnewpdro
I haven't, but have certainly experienced driving through regions where there
are still insects. Northern MN for example, that was reminiscent of what it
used to be like driving through NE.

That's besides the point though, at least along the route I drive most often,
which is i80 between SF and Chicago, there's been a very visible decline of
insects over the past ~1.5 decades according to the windshield gauge.

------
Pfhreak
Outdoor domestic cats, apparently, kill billions of birds annually. Have a
cat? Don't let it outdoors.

~~~
hombre_fatal
I wonder what impact it would have if everyone put a collar jingle bell on
their cat.

~~~
Waterluvian
My sister's cats have multiple bells and they still murder all the time.

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FuckButtons
I thought the Bay Area was unnervingly devoid of birds, I guess I was right.

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in_hindsight
Tangentially related, but is Scientific American worth subscribing to? I
really like reading paper magazines and am a subscriber to Science, but feel
like I could use lighter reading if it’s not too sensationalist

~~~
anigbrowl
No. It used to be great but then they went way downmarket about 20 years to
increase readership. After several years of declining quality I quite when I
noticed they had adjusted the font size and spacing to have about the same
number of pages (and ads) in each issue while reducing the actual content by
~20%.

I mean, it's not terrible but it used to be solidly educational whereas
_Nature_ or _Science_ is relatively hard work to read unless you really love
getting into the weeds. _Scientific American_ used to sit in the middle ground
between _Popular Mechanics_ or _National Geographic_ and actual journals, but
you'll probably find it disappointingly shallow.

~~~
chemicalnovae
More to the point then, is there anything that sits between the high quality
generalist journals and generalist scientific magazines (Nat Geo. and the
like)?

I can and do read Nature and Science, but outside of my PhD field I find it
pretty slow going and often feel like I'm missing out on what could be
interesting findings due to not having sufficient background to fully
understand the problem space.

~~~
anigbrowl
Not that I'm aware of, sadly. There's _New Scientist_ from the UK but that's
more of a weekly newspaper and thus a bit shallow. There's some great online
magazines of course (Quanta is pretty good) but for longform writing I still
like hard copy cause I'm old.

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merricksb
Other live discussion about same topic/study:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018916)

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kingkawn
We ded

