Less now than in the 1970s I recone guess the cause is Windows cats and pesticide on yards. It can't be all the chemicals our farming community's use. Well heaven's sake we need to feed the countries that despise us.

They are being killed by all the windmills.

I have less this year also.

Bernie you would think most birds could see the windmills?

How r windows a problem?

I have heard from many about the windmills. I can see about 50 of them from where i am typing-a couple are 1/4 mile from my house. I have frequently walked under them and have never seen a dead bird. I HAVE watched flocks of geese fly right through them like they weren't there and have never seen one hit. Not saying it doesn't happen-just that I have a ringside seat and it's not happening in my area.

Modern Ag has turned alot of wildlife habitat into a black desert but it is getting better with the addition of no till and cover crops.

I drove thru pheasant country south of Pierre SoDak yesterday and saw nary a bird.

The big organic chicken and egg farms near here fill a fenced in field with chickens to full maximum capacity. The chickens eat and trample the vegetation to bare dirt. They feed a non gmo, organic feed and proudly sell a "cruelty free, superior product".

Keith

Bird hit them all the time.

Here is what you can believe about news concerning bird decline and birds killed by windmills.
IT IS "NEWS"!
It is a fool who believes what's in the news.

I do not agree about windmills killing birds. A huge problem is CATS.

Pesticide's are killing bugs. Bugs are a big part of a birds diet. I see very few lightning bugs anymore. Don't see a lot of bats or scissortail birds any more. How many whippoorwills you hear on summer nights now? All bug eaters. Woodpecker tattoo is not something you hear daily anymore in summer. Its been a long while since I heard one. Ask beekeepers about pesticide over use

10 years ago a buddy and i counted 76 dead pheasants along i90 from the ft pierre exit to the hwy 81 exit in april. Been back down that route numerous times since then and i bet ive seen 20 total.

Read up on West Nile and birds. It has devastated the grouse population. The article I read says many songbirds are greatly affected by it as well. Some species handle it better than others. It doesn't seem to bother turkeys. There is a good article on YouTube by Pennsylvania game commission about it. A lady that works for them narrated. Very eye opening.

Scientists/biologists and their surveys like this drive me nuts. Really? 30% less. Not 32 or 28? How wonderfully exact. Who’s counting now, who counted then? Where? What season?, time of day? Did a group of coyotes just hunt through that section? Point being there are so many stinking variables, the arrogance of science is thinly veiled. Here’s a scenario-last couple years I’ve always bumped a couple does out of a wood lot. This year zero. As a good biologist I declare the population is down 100%. You could have an Army counting birds and you would never be able to count them all, never. Yet, omnipotent science declares...down 30%. Of course populations rise and fall, we all know that. Here’s one for you pheasant experts. Where’s the pheasant population compared to 150 years ago? Up or down? I always like when the experts say pen raised birds can’t survive in the wild. Really? How did the pheasants get here? Fly?...from China. I can tell you why birds are down here. There’s no place to live. I can show you thousands and thousands of acres that are faunal deserts; no brush, no fence rows, no cover for a mile in any direction.

Don't dish on the organics, its not a perfect system yet. However non of the corn fed will have been grown with neo-nicitonoids. This is a non discriminating killer of insects, good and bad. It is used in 90% of the corn fields you see. No bugs , no birds.

I bet if we could dig in deeper we would find west Nile virus has a lot to do with bird reductions

The Breeding Bird Survey has trend data since 1966, this is your best source for population data.

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/pwrc/s...nter_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

I know cell and tv towers with the guide wires kill birds during migration, and also reflective windows on high rise buildings

They see cars too and windmills are often moving three times as fast as a car. In a moderate wind the blades are moving 120-150 mph and in a strong wind they can be moving over 200 mph.

I have a friend who has windmills on his properties. There's a woman who comes once a week and picks up all the dead birds and records the species and counts them. It's her full time job.

I'm certain that the lack of birds is a lot more due to pesticides and farming practices than any other factor, but windmills kill a LOT of birds and it's being kept under wraps because it doesn't fit the environmentalist narrative.

WNV really hit our raptor in my area, never have recovered fully.

I agree 100%.

80% less birds here.

Trying to make sense of this post. 30% is just a number just like 28 or 32% but you are saying you would believe them if it wasn't a round number? That's irrational.

The Cornell college or ornithology is a world respected school on everything to do with birds and they have decades of track record of unbiased studies all over the world. They are the ones who finally brought the problem with feral cats into the public. eye. If you don't believe them, you won't believe anyone. Period. No matter how much proof is put in front of you.

Finally, your last sentence hit the target. All you have to do to know that there is a serious problem with birds is get outdoors more. Especially anywhere in farm country where habitat is being destroyed at an alarming rate and pesticides are killing off the food birds rely on. I don't need a college to tell me that bird numbers are down, all I need are simple powers of observation and enough common sense to look at the factors that add up to an environment where fewer birds can survive.

not sure about all of them, I am sure some are just regular with different chemicals "organic chemicals"

however I have a friend who is all organic meat , he rotational grazes his cattle , sheep and chickens all move to new grass every 2 days , turkeys pen moves every week , pigs have a large pasture to roam but due to possibility for escape it has to be fenced more than the Little that will keep the beef in .

he wants trees because they provide shade panted a hundred last spring, has bees and wild flower buffer strips.

his neighbor is all cash crop , you can see the erosion because he has grazed some areas more than 10 years next to the neighbors and the ground is lower on the other side of the fence .

one brings in a millions of dollars in equipment at planting and harvest the other makes a trip out on a 4 wheeler each day to check his heard.

he definitely has wild life , sometimes a bit too much and I have to help him out with some of it.

this seems like a very sustainable model as long as there is a market for the meat.

very easy on the land.

You're comparing a professional rowcrop farm to a hobby farm. Apples to banana comparison.

X2 live by hundreds and never seen a bird dead

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/the-big-one-300-birds-mysteriously-crash-into-nascar-hall-of-fame

Wow they're saying a billion birds a year biff it on windows. I know a heck of a lot of them hit windows at my place.

LMAO

Small stickers, etc on the windows help a lot. Spent many hours cutting out silhouettes of birds to paste onto library windows while in college to help with that. Any time a bird sees "through" two windows, they try to go through them.

I would think a great many times as many birds fly into the millions of miles of telephone and powerlines than windmills.

Keith

FYI the Cornell of the 21st century is not to trusted with these matters anymore.

In the late 60s, I had a friend whose grandfather had been the light keeper of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. He told her that following foggy nights in the winter months, he would pick up dead Canada geese that that flown into the lighthouse during the night. Canada geese rarely come this far south anymore.

that has more to do with agriculture than anything else. Plenty of Corn and wheat fields for geese to winter in as well as Nuclear power plant discharge areas for water.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hundre...shing-into-nascar-hall-of-fame-building/
Don't know if site will load, but it's about the 300+/- birds that crashed into the windows of the NASCAR hall of fame.

Hey, I finally figured something out!

No doubt that multitudes of birds die crashing into windows, hit by cars, get shreaed by windmills of various designs. However, current agricultural practices are not conducive to birds. No insects equals very few of certain bird varieties. This shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone that knows diddly about the "woods".