Songbirds' absence proverbial canaries in a coal mine

Does anyone else miss the little birds? Our feeders were visited only by the regulars this winter. The cliff swallows I used to love watching swoop overhead seem to have practically disappeared.

York University professor Bridget Stutchbury’s new book Silence of the Songbirds appears to have many of the answers. She has been studying songbirds for 20 years.

Given that Central and South American countries are clearing about four million hectares of forest per year, the winter habitat for our songbirds is disappearing. Apparently in the last 100 years, 300 million hectares of rain forest - half the area of Canada - has been logged and turned into cropland.

Canada’s vast forests themselves should be better protected to preserve wildlife and water and to fight global warming, a group of 1,500 scientists from around the world said recently. The Boreal Forest, stretching from the Alaskan border and running north of the plains all the way to Newfoundland on the Atlantic, is one of largest intact forest-and-wetland ecosystems remaining on earth. It supports, among other creatures, three billion migratory songbirds.

The scientists have called for half of this vast forest to be protected, up from 10 per cent now, and for development in the rest to be managed carefully, particularly in the face of pressure from logging, mining and oil and gas operations.

The fact that the northern hemisphere has switched to sun-grown coffee from shade-grown is another part of the problem. Stutchbury says the world is just as hooked on pesticides. Apparently we ship the ones that are banned here down south and then they ship food back that has been grown with them.

This professor’s work has been compared to Rachel Carson's monumental Silent Spring. She calls songbirds the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

According to Stutchbury, year-by-year, the total number of birds is slowly getting lower and lower. This is true even in Canada due to clearcutting and deforestation.

What can we do to help the songbirds? Buy shade-grown coffee, buy organic produce from tropical countries and locally, and don’t put pesticides on your lawn.

She also recommends buying wood and paper products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, buying recycled toilet paper, turning lights off at night during migration, reduce bird-window collisions by moving bird feeders, making your backyard bird-friendly by planting shrubs and trees, and keeping cats indoors.

The U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service in Vermont has even begun to offer farmers a $100-an-acre incentive to delay hay cuts so songbirds can nest. It’s frightening to note as well that research in Britain indicates that birds near mobile phone base stations or towers don’t breed well.

The sparrows have disappeared completely from cities at least four years ago in England as mobile phones grew in popularity. A recent article in The Independent suggests that both birds and bees are impacted negatively by phone waves.

Talk about canaries in a coal mine.