Stark message of birds’ decline
How many birds you can see while walking around your neighbourhood has become something of a postcode lottery.
Tragically, wherever you live, be it in the city, leafy suburbia or deep in the countryside, the numbers are likely to be a fraction of those in previous decades.
A new online tool from the British Trust for Ornithology allows nature lovers to discover the birds that have vanished from an area since 1970 by simply tapping in a postcode.
Scientists have used Bto-led surveys to calculate the net losses at 73 million individual birds, with almost 30 million house sparrows, 20m starlings, four million skylarks, two million blackbirds and a million chaffinches no longer here to brighten our lives.
Over the same period, there has been a massive population boom of woodpigeons, while wrens and blackcaps have also increased in number.
Similarly, the status of little, great and cattle egrets as nesting birds has been notable. Yet these increases, estimated at 41 million, masks the true total losses put at 114 million individual birds.
Entering my postcode on the BTO’S Birds On Your Doorstep website reveals 14 species have vanished from my part of the Chiltern Hills. These include the lesser spotted woodpecker, tree pipit, nightingale, wood warbler and willow tit.
Notable new species on the block are red kite, buzzard, hobby and sparrowhawk. Herring and lesser black-backed gulls are two other noticeable (and noisy) additions.
The BTO has been able to bring home the stark message that our birds are in peril by utilising the efforts of its vast army of volunteer birdwatchers.
As BTO chief executive Professor Juliet Vickery explains: “Our wealth of data means we can confidently report this alarming drop in the UK’S breeding bird population.
“Presenting these results at the local level, so that anyone can see the changes that have happened on their doorstep simply by entering their postcode, delivers a powerful message that the UK’S birds are in trouble, and that we all need to do more.”
Surveys suggest we have lost around 73 million birds in the UK