Where have all the birds gone?

Thu 20 Apr 2023, 15:15

Yellow wagtail also spotted just now, near the sluice gate on Mill Field.  Not always gloom & doom!

Tue 18 Apr 2023, 21:31 (last edited on Wed 19 Apr 2023, 08:58)

We had lots of small birds using our bird feeders through the winter and then about 2 or 3  weeks ago they all vanished. Weird and troubling. We are left with just two fat and rather annoying pigeons...

Tue 18 Apr 2023, 17:23 (last edited on Tue 18 Apr 2023, 22:08)

Have just seen the first pair of house martins....

More generally, the decline in bird life is surely yet another symptom of the wider loss of biodiversity we have witnessed over the last few decades - or rather, have allowed to happen.  Start with the insects - anyone of 'a certain age' will remember how a 10 minute drive on a summer's evening would result in loads of them on the headlights and windscreen - or how just leaving a light on and a window open and soon there they would be clustering around it, including many more moths than you find nowadays.  Hardly just a Charlbury issue so for causes and cures, perhaps the Debate section - anyone??

PS Coincidentally I just caught the final instalment of Attenborough's Wild Isles on iplayer. If you want causes & cures, do watch.  Careful though, you may never eat a scallop again...

Mon 17 Apr 2023, 17:17

I think the weather has a large part to play in the birds being absent.  We have had a very cold, wet and miserable March/April.  I'm still feeding a lot of birds in my garden when, normally, they would be out foraging for food themselves.

Mon 17 Apr 2023, 13:46

By mid-April in previous years there was uproar from the trees and hedges, several blackbirds arrived looking for (and getting) mealworms, and there was a chorus of thrushes every evening.  Is bird flu responsible?  I know it's been bad, but gosh we miss our birds.