550 million fewer birds …

Day 218 #365DaysWild

Selbourne February 8th 1772

‘When I ride about in winter, and see such prodigious flocks of various kinds of birds, I cannot help at admiring these congregations’.

Rev. Gilbert White

Notably fewer birds around. Silence. Where once I saw and heard small flocks of linnets and other finches, there are now none.

Over a beer Phil asked me whether it mattered if bitterns become extinct.

Our lapwings have vacated their overwintering fields due to work on a massive new water pipeline.

Compared with a generation ago, there are 550 million fewer birds in Europe, with their decline well documented. 

Nesting sites and food are considered to be two key factors. Or as White termed it ‘love and hunger’.

In May of last year, a team of more than 50 researchers, analysing data collected by thousands of citizen scientists in 28 countries over nearly four decades, found that it is intensive agriculture, above all, that is behind the decline in the continent’s bird populations.

Toxic chemicals. Soil degradation. Hedges cut to within an inch of their lives. Insufficient attention to invertebrate populations and the consequent removal of food supplies. 

Add to this climate crisis and avian flu…

I could go on.

To answer Phil’s  question, our own lives are measurably poorer without nature. And nature is made up of a kaleidoscope of species, all of which contribute to a complex, interconnected web of life of which we are part. 

Bitterns and Wall Brown butterflies are our own ‘canaries in the coal mine’ indicating the life of the natural world in which we depend.

Just imagine a world where of ‘prodigious flocks of various kinds of birds..’

How much better our lives could - and should - be.