By Staff
Having 432 million fewer common American birds than we did 40 years ago ought to be a wake-up call.
Many of the species in decline are specialists that depend on open grassy habitats consumed by suburban sprawl.
Climate change is also to blame, according to Greg Butcher, an Audubon official.
Birds still thriving are generalists that adapt to all kinds of environments.
Butcher authored a new National Audubon Society study comparing its own Christmas count and U.S. Geological Survey data, concluding it's a lot quieter with fewer whippoorwill calls or bobwhite wake-up whistles.
They are among 20 common bird species with numbers exceeding half a million that have seen their populations dwindle by at least half since 1967.
Evening grosbeaks used to be so plentiful that people complained about the birds crowding feeders and polishing off 50-pound bags of sunflowers in a few days – but its numbers have fallen 78 percent.
Hardest hit has been the northern bobwhite, down to 5.5 million from 31 million in 1967.
Grackles were as plentiful as people in the Summer of Love, with both populations hovering around 200 million.
Today, the score is humans, 300 million, grackles 73 million.
The good news, if there is any, is that other birds are becoming more common.
Wild turkeys, for example, are increasing by 14 percent a year.
"Most of these we don't expect will go extinct. We think they reflect other things that are happening in the environment that we should be worried about," Butcher said.
Audubon board Chair Carol Browner, the former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, told The Associated Press, "We are concerned. Is it an emergency? No, but concerns can quickly become an emergency."
We don't want our beloved birds to become canaries in the coalmine.