Song birds dissappearing.

[jall25]

6 hours ago, Rim Fire said:

Well done and good luck we also got three Ospreys platforms hoping they will use one of them 

Awesome !

The osprey comes to a local fishery near us and digests his dinner in our trees sometimes 

5 hours ago, Poor Shot said:

Before I replaced the old and overgrown Cherry Laurel hedge in my garden I had planned to leave it over spring summer for any nesting birds to be done and fledged. I didn't need to as one morning a group of 5-6 magpies systematically worked their way down the hedge forcing parents off the nests and eating any eggs or chicks. They wiped out the entire 30m of hedge in a few hours. The hedge has since been replaced with a natural hedge formed of Beech, Hawthorn, blackthorn, hornbeam and hazel and a good number of bird boxes of varying types placed around the garden to make up while the new hedge matures.

There is a lane that runs past the end of my property that goes on for a mile or so and is lined with ivy covered matured oaks. They are almost perfect for nesting birds with a lot of thick cover woven into the branches and on walking up there yesterday and I don't think I can recall a spring where I've seen more destroyed eggs laying on the ground that have clearly been predated before they could hatch.  

I do my best with the squirrels that visit our garden with traps and an air rifle but my hands are tied with magpies as I live in Wales and those lunatics in NRW saw it best to remove the shooting of magpies under GL 004. We also have plenty of semi feral cats which must also have a devastating effect on the bird life locally. 

   

Ta pictures and send the loons the evidence 

[Nublue 22]

4 hours ago, B686 said:

I also think a lot could have to do with lack of food like insects . When I first started driving 30+ years ago I remember having to regularly clean my windscreen of hundreds of squashed insects. Don’t do it now . 

Yes you'd have to clean your motorcycle helmet visor ever time you went out, not any more. 

[Nublue 22]

You thought it couldn't get any worse. 

[old'un]

What gets me is, all these so called experts seem to-be clueless on the decline of any wildlife and come out with things like….’we are not sure why xyz are in decline but loss of habitat and global warming maybe a factor’ ….ask someone who sees what's happening might help.

 

 

Edited April 26 by old'un

[39TDS]

Big changes around here over the decades have been the move from many small/medium sized family farms to far fewer farms that are great big places with hundreds of cows rather than 50-60. Those smaller farms were often mixed farming so had dairy and arable. So all the farmyards with flocks of sparrows feeding off the spilled grain etc are gone along with the farmyard. The buildings are now houses and not somewhere for swallows etc to nest.

Gone are the days of haymaking, nearly everyone just does multiple silage cuts. So no wild flower meadows full of insects and seeds for the birds.

I also think that removal of certain insecticides for often political reasons means less choice and the ones left kill everything. Neonicotinoids were subject to a blanket ban where some of them were "bee friendly", the choice then were permethrins which kill everything. I might be wrong on that but worth looking into. There is currently a long running campaign by Greenpeace against the limited use of neonicotinoids in sugar beet on the grounds that it harms bees. It makes no sense as it is a seed treatment and sugar beet is harvested before flowering. Bees won't come into contact with it.

There are other things going on that no doubt affect the bird population but I do think the big changes in agriculture are going to be a big part of it. I am not blaming the farmers, they are in massive decline too!

[Poor Shot]

Habitat loss certainly plays a big part. Here locally anything bigger than a 6x6 plot is being bought up and developed into housing. Strangely enough a lot of the ex industrial brownfield sites are being left unused and green space being built on instead.

There used to be a large wetlands area a few minutes away which runs alongside a river. In the last 15-20 years its shrunk to about 1/2 of its original size with a 150 home estate, fast food outlets and two supermarkets built on the site. About another 1/4 of the remaining 1/2 is still for sale for commercial development. It comes as no surprise that a lot of downstream areas now experience flooding where it didn't before. That the numbers of wildfowl that depended on the wetlands are vastly decreased. Locals are very excited about being able to see otters, geese, swans, herons and foxes quite often whereas they used to be rare. The numbers of wildlife hasn't changed, their habitat has just been squeezed to a point where contact with humans is unavoidable for them.

Not 500 yards away in one direction is an ex washery and colliery site which could have been built on and an ex furnicite plant in the other direction.

Edited April 26 by Poor Shot

[williamwansbeck]

1 hour ago, Poor Shot said:

Habitat loss certainly plays a big part. Here locally anything bigger than a 6x6 plot is being bought up and developed into housing. Strangely enough a lot of the ex industrial brownfield sites are being left unused and green space being built on instead.

There used to be a large wetlands area a few minutes away which runs alongside a river. In the last 15-20 years its shrunk to about 1/2 of its original size with a 150 home estate, fast food outlets and two supermarkets built on the site. About another 1/4 of the remaining 1/2 is still for sale for commercial development. It comes as no surprise that a lot of downstream areas now experience flooding where it didn't before. That the numbers of wildfowl that depended on the wetlands are vastly decreased. Locals are very excited about being able to see otters, geese, swans, herons and foxes quite often whereas they used to be rare. The numbers of wildlife hasn't changed, their habitat has just been squeezed to a point where contact with humans is unavoidable for them.

Not 500 yards away in one direction is an ex washery and colliery site which could have been built on and an ex furnicite plant in the other direction.

Same up in Northumberland  they are building on prime farmland in financially eay to sell areas while used/ brown field areas are being ignored ,and the councils are complicit

[Mice!]

On 26/04/2024 at 20:52, Poor Shot said:

Not 500 yards away in one direction is an ex washery and colliery site which could have been built on and an ex furnicite plant in the other direction

Because the builders don't want the cost of clearing and cleaning the site before they can begin building. 

Near me at Buckshaw village there's now a massive new housing estate with a massive amount of different homes, schools etc, this was built on the old Royal Ordanance site, so was a good use of the space.

But there are still houses going up everywhere you look, it's never going to change unfortunately,  building on countryside should really be the last resort like it used to be, but those days of Green belt being protected are well gone it seems 😪