Songbirds noticeably absent

[gsxrken]

I'm born and raised in NY and we always had a very nice mix of songbirds. So much so that they were so ubiquitous they basically went unnoticed. Lately I've begun to notice that there are often no birds in sight or within earshot, or if they are any, they seem few and far between.
Evidently this is not a fluke.

"Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone... A new study finds steep, long-term losses across virtually all groups of birds in the U.S. and Canada"
https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762090471/north-america-has-lost-3-billion-birds-scientists-say

It's a real loss. I'm no statist, but we share this planet with other beings and we should alter behavior that threatens their existence.

[Scott Douglas]

About the only song bird we have around here in So Cal is the mocking bird and a little further north (like in Santa Monica) blue jays. The brown toehees make noise but it's far from a song IMO.
Crows don't count IMO.

[Sooner or later]

No noticeable change for me. My feeders empty out constantly.

[GH85Carrera]

We have lots of birds. Blue birds nest in our birdhouse we put up got them. Cardinals, and lots of native sparrows.

[Grog]

Wind turbines are killing them.

[450knotOffice]

I’m in South Orange County, and I have many many birds all day, every day flitting about my property, mostly near my feeders. Many different types of birds. I’ve had a permanent gang of maybe 3-4 hummingbirds for years, year ‘round.

[Sooner or later]

Last year I had a Spotted Towhee living in my backyard shrubs. I had no idea what it was. At first I thought is was a strange looking Robin. If was a singing sob. Only one I have ever seen.

[Evans, Marv]

I live south of Milt and Scott in S.D. County. We have a decent amount of ravens, wood peckers, hawks (I feed a pair every afternoon), turkeys (a reduced number of them) and hummingbirds. Other than that, not much else. The number of owls seems reduced. There are a few types that migrate through during different times of the year. It seems to me and my neighbors the variety and number of animals generally have reduced a lot in the past decade, except for deer. We almost never hear or see coyotes, bob cats, racoons, skunks, or opossums. Foxes seem to have displaced them. They steel sandals and hiking boots if you leave them out.

[pwd72s]

Originally Posted by Grog

Wind turbines are killing them.

A truth seldom mentioned.

[john70t]

Over Thanksgiving I did see a flock of about 25 Great Blue Herons. Amazing. Only seen one or two at a time on long Huron River trips in my entire lifetime. That will probably never happen again.

I keep a couple feeders with sunflower seeds, suet, and nyger seed especially for the fall migration. There are a flock of about ten yellow canaries in the area which love feeding on fall cone flower seeds. A few downy woodpeckers, red-headed finches, chickadees, bluejays, cardinals and occasional nut-hatches. Not many though. No pliliated woodpeckers for many years. No tufted titmouses yet either. The english sparrow don't seem quite as aggressive towards other visiting birds lately.

The destruction can probably be attributed mostly to a few farming supply companies. Also lack of habitat. Other effects might by magnetic interference from devices we use etc. I don't know. It's tragic and permanent.

[wdfifteen]

There is a huge loss of habitat. Developers buy up land clear cut it, and build condos x where are the birds going to live? Perfect lawns, poisoned so they are insect-free, and ornamental shrubs are a terrible environment for birds.
We happen to live in a wild bird paradise. Our deck overlooks a wooded are with a creek running through it. We feed 40 pounds of black oil sunflower seed a week. We see ducks, herons, and kingfishers at the creek, and a dozen or so species at the feeders the smallest are the hummingbirds and the largest are the Pileated woodpeckers.

[Cajundaddy]

We are thick with song birds in my area of SoCal. Roughly 2 dozen can be spotted on daily walks along with a fair increase of waterfowl including egrets, great blue heron, night heron, duck varieties, geese, and white pelican over the last 20 years.

I guess it varies a lot based on location.

[ckelly78z]

We often go camping at Maumee Bay State Park in Northern Ohio around Mother's Day, not so much for the birding, but for the hiking/biking trails, and really nice campground. There is never a lack of song birds flitting all over the trees.

https://birding-in-ohio.com/lucas-county/maumee-bay-state-park/

[Tervuren]

Our predictions ahead of solar cycle 24 cycle was waaaaaaaaay off.
We've got the sun providing a rather different set of radiation than predicted.
Doesn't surprise me in light of this to have vegetation and animal differences, losses, and different migration.

At this point, there isn't consensus on cycle 25 at all, one person has a model that when run with older data correctly predicts cycle 24.
That model points out that cycle 25 will be a deep aberration from predictions made pre cycle 24.

Something to keep an ear out for.

[cairns]

Can you say kitty cats?

[SteveDraz]

Tons here in Northeast Ohio. If anything, I think there's more than a few years ago.

[wswartzwel]

We have an abundance of hawks in our neighborhood. It is a gruesome sight watching a mockingbird squawking and trying to get away when a hawk has it in its talons. We still have lots of songbirds, especially bluebirds, and cardinals bathing in our fish pond water feature, next to the patio. Bluebirds have been having 2 hatchings lately. One in the spring, and one late summer.

[Tervuren]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

There is a huge loss of habitat.

This can be counter intuitive depending on how development is done.


Think of the air cooled fins on your Porsche.
If it were just a flat plane instead, and you cut into it to make fins, rather than a loss of radiation, you have an increase.

What is happening in my area is development and increase in wild life both.
This is because deep forest has a comparatively flat top canopy; there is open space under good for predators.
The fringes in contrast have a 3d vertical element that increase surface area, this also provides better cover for critters from predators.

Running housing developments in fingers similar to the fins on an aircooled car can increase the wild life in an area.
Development introduces a vertical area all along the fringes.
This vertical area has a greater variety of life than the comparatively horizontal area of a deep un developed forest.

This is also why forest fires and violent storms are so important as they take out sections of the deep forest and create fringes.

The world is a lot less simple than I used to think it was.

[KFC911]

Development has taken their habitat in the past few years here....getting worse. It sux....

[OK-944]

Yes...even in our shanghai-la here in northern Vermont, where we own 25 acres of mostly mixed hardwoods, with some softwoods, a cattail marsh, and three open acres, we've noticed the falloff. We are very, very sad, and also angry, about this.

While our birds may be happy when they're here, we cannot protect them while they are away for the winter, and while when they do return we breath sighs of relief, they often do not return, or at least in numbers matching those of the very recent past. For our part. we vow to leave our precious forest untouched so that it can continue to provide a haven for all creatures... which truly deserve our support and respect.