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Wander project cats, screen porches and the decline of birds…

The first pictures today are a few pictures from my parent’s old house in Bloomington Indiana around ten years ago. The interesting pictures are at the end. The reason I shared these was because of the subject of the pictures. My parents had a screen porch off the back of their kitchen/dining room. Max was their cat. They got max and mac’s brother when they moved to the house. The brother ran away within a week of moving in and was never seen again. Max stayed; his job was to catch mice. He wasn’t very good at his job. In fact, in all the years I was around Max I am not sure he ever caught a mouse. But, I realized watching CarolDM’s posts, that Max, like her cats, watched birds.

Sitting in the screen porch trying to convince the birds that nothing bad would happen if they came in the dog door and joined him in the screen porch. My dad had created a sanctuary for birds and wildlife in the back yard. It was a recognized Indiana habitat, and he had a plague on the front and side door of the house. The reason for the plague was to notify anyone coming to the house that they could not spray pesticides. The loss of habitat is a huge contributor to the loss of birds over the last 40 years. It is, not the fake news that wind turbines are killing birds. The studies released over the past two weeks show in fact since 1970, North America has lost 3 billion birds.

That staggering number is scary. For some reason, the US Government is telling people that wind turbines are the primary killer of birds. Sadly, based on the issues around the world, wind turbines are not even in the top five. In fact, there are two human activities that are far worse.

What is killing North American Birds:

Climate change

Encroachment on habitats

Domestic Cats

Wil cats

HUMANS (cars, windows, and hunting)

The reality is 3 billion birds are gone. To put that in perspective, that represents 25% of the total bird population in North America.

Report

What do you think?

Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

18 Comments

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    • No question turbines kills birds. But that is on the order of 300 million in the entire world every year.

      Cats are more than 9 billion birds killed a year globally.
      Climate change, per the studies, maybe more than 20 billion a year.

      turbines are chump change but yes they do kill birds.

  1. Some species in particular are decreasing in number, it doesn’t feel we’re running out of pigeons or seagulls. But very sad nevertheless.
    Birds are important for the ecosystem, like all animals anyway.
    Cats hunting mice sounds like a urban legend but I actually heard of cats doing so, they were former strays but it could be something in their genes that gives a predisposition.

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  2. I heard today the horrifying statistic that on Java (Indonesia) there are now more birds in cages that there are in the wild. Catching birds for the domestic market is big business, and we all know how money is the main factor in so many instances.

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