Re: Where has all the Song Birds Gone?

King, to be fair, not backing up your statements with factual evidence make your arguments weak.

I haven't seen one Sparrowhawk in my Garden (nor any evidence of one) in the time I've lived here. I'd love to see one.

You clearly have a beef about the RSPB which is of course dandy if that's what floats your boat.

king

With mentality like yours you got to be high up within the RSPB. Are you speaking for all it's members?

Lots of birds don't sing , or very little , in winter. Some of our best song birds migrate to warmer climes for the winter. Blaming one or two birds for the apparent lack of other species is daft in the extreme.

In my opinion and by reading all the various posts on this site, we all have different species of birds visiting our gardens and to be honest, what ever birds we get, we should be grateful that they allow us to share their lives.

Nice one Maria,we always feel it a special privilege when we end up with 6 or more Bullfinch in the garden.

So, King.... You seem to be of the view that sparrowhawk numbers have dramatically increased while their prey species numbers have declined. Would you care to advise the good people who read these fora as to what you see as the reason for this mysterious recent imbalance?

The problem with a lot of people who beef about the increase in Raptors and decrease in Song Birds is the lack of either real personal observation or the reading and understanding of research done by others.

Before claiming that you have personal knowledge you need to sit (preferably hidden) in your chosen location for several hours over several days and record all that you see.

When rising to challenge  other observers for their lack of intelligence it might be wise to check your own.

Opinions formed in the local pub and fuelled by "red top" style press are hardly likely to be accurate and therefore not really worth the hot air used to express them.

Having fed injured Sparrowhawks I do have an idea of how much they eat. Not a lot. About two birds a day makes a very fat Sparrowhawk. One pigeon will do for two to three days.

Jenni

Jenni Morgan

 

Opinions formed in the local pub and fuelled by "red top" style press are hardly likely to be accurate and therefore not really worth the hot air used to express them.

Very true Jenni, and they're even more worthless when fuelled by the misinformation churned out by dubious fringe "conservation" bodies with carefully concealed agendas having very little do with promoting a healthy ecology.

When I first came to this forum 2 years ago I asked 'how to attract birds to my garden'.

Now I have many different birds and I know that observation is also part of knowing what you have.I actually had many more birds than I had at first thought I just was not 'seeing' them (if that makes sense!).

My garden is also a bit of an oasis on the estate as most gardens have been put down to lawn,paved over etc.

I have a couple of trees and lots of shrubs.I have had 1 Sparrowhawk in 10 years so the bird population round here possibly is not dense enough to support one,if I start to see a Sparrowhawk more often that to me is actually a sign that the bird population must be on the increase enough to sustain it!

Madpenguin,great sentiments,may your population continue to grow.

Following on from my last post I have just taken a walk to the Post Office and back (about 2 miles mainly through housing estate,new and old) and thought I would take a conscious 'look' around to see what birds there were rather than a general sort of look.

The place is teeming with birds!

Blackbirds,Robins,hedges full of sparrows,flocks of pigeons and starlings,seagulls ,rooks,crows,ducks,finches etc etc,and that was what I could see,there were many more to hear!

King - You have taken the trouble to offer your views in a forum that can be pretty unforgiving to those whose support for wildlife appears very selective. I feel that you deserve the courtesy of a structured response to the various issues you raised. So here goes.....

When I was a child every kid I knew collected birds eggs.Wild birds were in abundance.Song birds in every garden.The Rare birds were just that RARE. Today there is no egg collectors.

That last bit is untrue. Thankfully kids have moved-on from such pastimes but there are plenty of grown-ups with bad habits.(See http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/wildlife/f/3070/t/69388.aspx) by way of example.

You would think there would be even more birds than before? But No the thing that has changed is many of our rare birds are no longer rare.

And that's a good thing surely....

As a child I NEVER saw a Sparrowhawk or Peregrine falcon.Today I see Sparrowhawks everywhere,several live local to me.I Saw a Peregrine last week. Why are these birds still classed as rare?

Who exactly is classing them "rare"? The sparrowhawk population is put at about 39,000 pairs (in summer anyway). I saw a Peregrine last week too. In fact I see one everytime I go shopping in a certain major SW city, but they could still be regarded as rare as there's only about 1500 breeding pairs in the UK. Both species are green listed as not of conservation concern (for now anyway).

And the sad thing about this is,in the time it's taken me to write it i've seen just two birds from my window.A Seagull and a Sparrowhawk. When is the RSPB going to stop playing God. Start protecting ALL birds not just the ones with a hooked beak.

Have a look at http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/safeguardingspecies_tcm9-261583.pdf#page=15 which sets out the RSPB's current species protection priorities. See what proportion has hooked beaks. One of them I'd say is now beyond help in England.

JBNTS

There is also some good reading as to what birds are considered to be rare or scarce and of concern on the main pages of the RSPB site under the Birds and Wildlife-Bird Guide headings.Well worth a read and it will make more sense than bar top gossip.

JohnB a well structured reply makes more sense than the likes of me ranting on.

Just been reading the link that JohnB gave in his post (good post!).

It was interesting to read that in almost every case bird decline was due to habitat loss (food availability & nesting sites) or changes in farming practices.

So us humans seem to be (as always) the biggest culprit here.

I would also take issue with king's point that 'Any school kid will tell you that if hawks eat birds,the more hawks there is the more birds will be eaten FACT.'

That same school kid will also tell you that the sun moves across the sky while the earth stays still, or that a dolphin is a kind of fish - until their science teacher puts them right. Understanding the natural world properly requires rigorous scientific study - intuition and guesswork is no substitute.