I didn't realize the toll avian flu was taking on birds across the pond. We are fortunate to also have a wonderful spring chorus of birds and I miss them terribly come July when many stop singing or start to migrate. The purple martins arrive early, and leave early. Mockingbirds stay year-round and will sing in winter, too - just not as robustly. They are my favorite songbird.
A thoughtful way to help our avian friends (even if it IS a starling LOL) - I can't visualize the way this stack is situated but can't you put some kind of screen over it? I had an owner-built home in Maine (that was poorly built) and had starlings nest under the studio roof. They are non-native to America and aren't well-liked by birders, but I've heard them sing some pretty cool squeaky songs - even imitating machinery from city birds.
We would like to put a screen over the stack, but it's tucked in at a corner of our attic by the eaves where we can't reach.
It's a relief to have birds invading our roof again. Normally our sleep in summer is disturbed by the racket they make in our roof as dawn approaches--that's around 03:30 to 04:00 in summer. So many birds have died here, we had none this past summer. None! We didn't have the dawn chorus, either. We had scattered individual birdsongs instead.
The die-off from climate change was gradual, but the die-off from avian flu has been catastrophic and rapid. After it got deeply underway, the insect population crashed too. For example, this year's Big Butterfly Count (a citizen-science event) results were the lowest so far, nearly 50% lower than last year's. Birds that eat insects don't have enough food to chase.
The dawn chorus hasn't disappeared everywhere in the UK. Insects haven't disappeared entirely either. But it's bad--so we are happy to see any bird that falls by our plumbing stack get out through the bird hatch. And we are happy to have birds disturbing our sleep again.
I didn't realize the toll avian flu was taking on birds across the pond. We are fortunate to also have a wonderful spring chorus of birds and I miss them terribly come July when many stop singing or start to migrate. The purple martins arrive early, and leave early. Mockingbirds stay year-round and will sing in winter, too - just not as robustly. They are my favorite songbird.
I always liked to hear mockingbirds too. But I'm not very picky about birdsong. I just like to hear it.
A thoughtful way to help our avian friends (even if it IS a starling LOL) - I can't visualize the way this stack is situated but can't you put some kind of screen over it? I had an owner-built home in Maine (that was poorly built) and had starlings nest under the studio roof. They are non-native to America and aren't well-liked by birders, but I've heard them sing some pretty cool squeaky songs - even imitating machinery from city birds.
We would like to put a screen over the stack, but it's tucked in at a corner of our attic by the eaves where we can't reach.
It's a relief to have birds invading our roof again. Normally our sleep in summer is disturbed by the racket they make in our roof as dawn approaches--that's around 03:30 to 04:00 in summer. So many birds have died here, we had none this past summer. None! We didn't have the dawn chorus, either. We had scattered individual birdsongs instead.
The die-off from climate change was gradual, but the die-off from avian flu has been catastrophic and rapid. After it got deeply underway, the insect population crashed too. For example, this year's Big Butterfly Count (a citizen-science event) results were the lowest so far, nearly 50% lower than last year's. Birds that eat insects don't have enough food to chase.
The dawn chorus hasn't disappeared everywhere in the UK. Insects haven't disappeared entirely either. But it's bad--so we are happy to see any bird that falls by our plumbing stack get out through the bird hatch. And we are happy to have birds disturbing our sleep again.