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I Think I Spotted The Error!


Razors Edge

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...in this story!  They aren't accounting for the increase in the CHICKEN population! B-O-O-M! Crisis averted :hapydance:

Three billion North American birds have vanished since 1970, surveys show

By Elizabeth Pennisi

North America's birds are disappearing from the skies at a rate that's shocking even to ornithologists. Since the 1970s, the continent has lost 3 billion birds, nearly 30% of the total, and even common birds such as sparrows and blackbirds are in decline, U.S. and Canadian researchers report this week online in Science. "It's staggering," says first author Ken Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. The findings raise fears that some familiar species could go the way of the passenger pigeon, a species once so abundant that its extinction in the early 1900s seemed unthinkable.

The results, from the most comprehensive inventory ever done of North American birds, point to ecosystems in disarray because of habitat loss and other factors that have yet to be pinned down, researchers say. Yet ecologist Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who has been warning about shrinking plant and animal populations for decades, sees some hope in this new jolt of bad news: "It might stir needed action in light of the public interest in our feathered friends."

In past decades, Ehrlich and others have documented the decline of particular bird groups, including migratory songbirds. But 5 years ago, Rosenberg; Peter Marra, a conservation biologist now at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; and their colleagues decided to take a broader look at what is happening in North America's skies. They first turned to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, an annual spring census carried out by volunteers across Canada and the United States, which has amassed decades of data about 420 bird species. The team also drew on the Audubon Christmas Bird Count for data on about 55 species found in boreal forests and the Arctic tundra, and on the International Shorebird Survey for trends in shorebirds such as sandpipers and plovers. Aerial surveys of water bodies, swamps, and marshes filled out the picture for waterfowl. All together, they studied 529 bird species, about three-quarters of all species in North America, accounting for more than 90% of the entire bird population.

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I have noticed a huge decrease in seagulls  in my area.  Earlier this  year I was telling my wife, this place used to be crawling with them, where are they?  You still see them around but not in the numbers as before.

Don't get me wrong, I hate them but they are a part of coastal living...

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4 minutes ago, ChrisL said:

I have noticed a huge decrease in seagulls  in my area.  Earlier this  year I was telling my wife, this place used to be crawling with them, where are they?  You still see them around but not in the numbers as before.

Don't get me wrong, I hate them but they are a part of coastal living...

When we visited Mono Lake, they mentioned how some SoCal sea birds go there to lay eggs.  They also mentioned how those numbers have dropped over the years - possibly due to the drop in lake level and the large increase in salinity.

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2 minutes ago, late said:

Gramps used to talk about migrating birds making the day seem like nite, a century ago.

You were saying??

I remember as a kid watching the Canada Geese flying their giant V formations high in the sky as they went south and later when they returned north.  That was in PA, so maybe it wasn't/isn't a thing in VA, but I do miss those awesome displays of flying. 

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9 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

I remember as a kid watching the Canada Geese flying their giant V formations high in the sky as they went south and later when they returned north.  That was in PA, so maybe it wasn't/isn't a thing in VA, but I do miss those awesome displays of flying. 

Go to the Chesapeake. They have little huts right on the water for your migrating bird watching needs. 

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3 minutes ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Go to the Chesapeake. They have little huts right on the water for your migrating bird watching needs. 

Michener's Chesapeake is a great read and highlights the wonder of the Canada Goose. If you haven't read it, you should give it a try.

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Paul Ehrlich is still around?  I studied from his textbook in a Biology and Human Affairs course around 1970.

In addition to birds, the frog and other amphibian population has been declining since at least the 1970's, may be 50% and is declining at 3.7% per year now.  Some scientists say they've found a particular fungus that accounts for most of it, but one documentary showed a researcher counting the percentage of frogs with extra legs, multiple heads, and other deformities and claimed a dramatic increase.

The deformities would suggest a chemical rather than biological reason.  Today, researchers have found traces of synthetic hormones at the tops of peaks in the Rocky Mountains, so there's certainly a problem there.

The concentration of sperm in human males is about 30% of what it was in the 1800's, so maybe nature is slowly finding a solution to the problem of ecosystem destruction!

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26 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

I remember as a kid watching the Canada Geese flying their giant V formations high in the sky as they went south and later when they returned north.  That was in PA, so maybe it wasn't/isn't a thing in VA, but I do miss those awesome displays of flying. 

I remember them in the mid 80’s in NoVA. Yeah it was cool.  

I think your missing Canadian Geese's are in SoCal.  There are thousands of them now that have made SoCal their permanent home.  My kids HS fields have huge flocks of them each morning.  I was walking Jack last night near their school and couldn’t count all of the Canadian geese’s if I tried.

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36 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

The concentration of sperm in human males is about 30% of what it was in the 1800's, so maybe nature is slowly finding a solution to the problem of ecosystem destruction!

Perhaps they should call it Round Down instead of Round Up.

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