Title : BIRDS OF A FEATHER
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BIRDS OF A FEATHER
DECLINING POPULATIONS: WHY?
Every once in a while, dealing with – and writing about – all the atrocities of Team Trump commits on a daily basis, it gets overwhelming. Take any week of the now near two year old Trump Administration of injustice and pussy grabbing and you find a near daily assault on our intelligence and our basic sense of human decency. So today, I’m taking a break and speaking to you about nothing political.
We’ve been in our C Street, Northeast, D.C. house that sits about four blocks from the Supreme Court for about 7 years now. The house itself is nothing special, in fact, it is similar to the bulk of Washington’s row houses but we do have a decently sized backyard. For years we’ve grown herbs (basil, sage, oregano, dill for the most part), melons, tomatoes, green beans and squash. The squash – the butternut variety - has become problematic since its tendrils have threaded their way among the legs of the chairs and picnic table that we can no longer use. They are prolific producers apparently thriving on all the construction debris that still lies under the first 4 inches of soil. But, hey, we’ll be supplied with a sufficient supply of these yellow beauties for at least a year.
But it’s to our makeshift bird feeders that I turn your attention to now. Sure, back four or five years ago we had a couple of your standard tube style bird feeders that we loaded up with cheap seed from our local Safeway but in the end they were no match for the ever energetic and wily grey squirrels who inevitably came to munch down on our offerings while keeping the birds at bay. So we substituted our regulation feeders with a couple of the bottoms of those tan plastic planters you buy at Home Depot and Lowes. We just put them on top of the picnic table and all the birds would come flying down to sup along with the two or three squirrels who also partook of our generosity. (Obviously we had simply given up trying to outsmart the grey monsters or thwarting their greediness.)
Well, in the beginning we had the usual phalanx of brown Chickadees and their related ilk, a couple of pairs of Cardinals, some Starlings, a couple of pair of Doves, Red Wing Blackbirds, Baltimore Orioles, Blue Jays, pigeons, the occasional Seagull (there are lots of them down on the National Mall) and a couple of other species. Also, we were visited by hummingbirds maybe once a week who flitted among the adjacent trees. In fact, I planted a trumpet vine to attract them that’s now overflowing over the fence into my neighbor’s backyard. Every morning around 7:30 there were 50 birds sitting in the trees and wires waiting for us to refill our ad hoc bird feeders. Once there was a young hawk who hung around for a few days but was eventually chased away by the squirrels.
I’m not sure about the cause – climate change, urban heat, natural selection – but the range of birds has decreased markedly since we first moved here. Now we have an abundance of Chickadees, a pair of Doves, the occasional Starling and not much else. May be once a month some pigeon couple will show up but that’s about it. No more Cardinals, Blue Jays, or Red Wing Black Birds and it’s discouraging. We haven’t seen a Blue Jay in probably five or six years. Plus, we no longer see so many squirrels chomping down on those sunflower seeds on a daily basis and this year I’ve noticed a precipitous decline in the number of squirrels throughout the neighborhood.
So what gives? I’m sure there’s some explanation, some scientific reason for the decline, but it’s a mystery to me. I can’t see that anything all that drastic has changed in our yard or in our neighborhood over the past few years. But there’s no doubt that we have lost both bird varieties and squirrels. Is it the result of more cats in on Capitol Hill? There’s been a huge increase in mosquito spraying over the past few years. Is there a connection? Or maybe it’s the city’s rat eradication campaign that’s spread rat poison pretty much everywhere. I just don’t know. But is’ clear that we have witnessed a significant reduction in the range of our avian visitors. And it’s a shame.
Anyway, as November 6th Looms Ever Closer, Have a Great Day!
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