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.
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.
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.
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.
More starlings for us 😒