# "Birds of the World"



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Last year, at a visit to our local flower conservatory's gift shop, I purchased a book called *Birds of the World*. It contains a color photograph next to one page of text for each day of the year (except Feb. 29). I've been reading it in the proscribed 1-bird-a-day manner this calendar year.

What I didn't realize at the time I bought it was that the author is European. So, although there is the occasional North American / South American bird, most of the birds represented in this book are ones that summer in Europe and winter in the Middle East or Africa.

In the meantime, in one of the latest issues of *National Geographic*, there was an article about songbird capture/killing in southern Europe. It seems that people are killing songbirds either at random, or to provide table delicacies for local restaurants. (Each bird provides not much more than a mouthful or two)

When the book I'm reading was published several years ago, the author was already lamenting the vanishing flocks of many species of European songbirds. I wonder what the situation is like now?

I know there are a lot more pressing problems people are dealing with, but how short-sighted can people be? It makes me wonder how much more the insects of southern Europe are proliferating now.


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## EricABQ (Jul 10, 2012)

I'm a definite meat eater so I'm not sure how much moral standing I have, but the killing of song birds for food just seems ridiculous to me. Killing a wild bird for less than a mouthful of meat is wrong, period. I haven't heard of that problem here in the U.S, here the big problem is cats that are either feral or that their owners allow to run free. The estimates of how many birds these cats kill each year can run into the millions. Just the other day the wife and I were out for a walk and witnessed someone's pet cat attacking a quail's nest.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

EricABQ said:


> I'm a definite meat eater so I'm not sure how much moral standing I have, but the killing of song birds for food just seems ridiculous to me. Killing a wild bird for less than a mouthful of meat is wrong, period.


When I was a kid we lived out in the rural areas, and my brother and I (and friends visiting from the city) often hunted birds with slingshots or air rifles. My father had a rule: you can shoot birds, but you eat what you shoot. So we never shot at things like kingfishers or shrikes. We did kill some sparrows, weaver birds and doves, and we always made a little fire and cooked them, and then shared the very small morsel of meat. Actually there is nothing quite as delicious as the meat of a bird you have hunted yourself. At least when you are ten years old, anyway. 

As we grew older, we outgrew this desire to hunt with anything other than a camera. The piece of land where I grew up is still in the family, and I now regularly take friends and their kids there. The boys always want to know whether they can shoot birds, and I always give them the same rule: you eat what you shoot. This is usually enough to dissuade them - city kids are such sissies. 

Anyway, having hunted birds in my youth did not turn me into a sadist. If anything, it increased my sense of being one with nature. Nowadays I view hunting with some distaste, but I also recognize that at least here in Dark Africa, it is an essential part of conservation.

As far as I know, killing songbirds has been going on in many areas of Europe for ages. But as the human population grew, the pressure on bird populations obviously got much worse, and if they don't strictly regulate it, they may end up losing their birds.



> I haven't heard of that problem here in the U.S, here the big problem is cats that are either feral or that their owners allow to run free. The estimates of how many birds these cats kill each year can run into the millions. Just the other day the wife and I were out for a walk and witnessed someone's pet cat attacking a quail's nest.


The cats are mostly concentrated in the urban areas, which are not natural habitat anyway. What's more, even with cats and all, cities support much higher populations of some bird species than would have been the case otherwise. Thus I am not sure cats are really such a big problem. At least not in America, which has native species of small cats, so that birds have evolved some defenses.

In Australia, the introduction of domestic cats has been an absolute disaster.

Here in Dark Africa, cats are not much of an issue because this is where cats come from in the first place anyway. My own cat (or rather, the cat that allows me to live in her house and serve her) cuts a gruesome swathe through local populations of insects, lizards, geckos and garden birds, without seeming to have much effect on their numbers.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EricABQ said:


> Killing a wild bird for less than a mouthful of meat is wrong, period.


How about if it's two mouthfuls? Three? How many mouthfuls of meat justify killing that cute little birdie? IMWTK!


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

EricABQ said:


> I'm a definite meat eater so I'm not sure how much moral standing I have, but the killing of song birds for food just seems ridiculous to me. Killing a wild bird for less than a mouthful of meat is wrong, period. I haven't heard of that problem here in the U.S, here the big problem is cats that are either feral or that their owners allow to run free. The estimates of how many birds these cats kill each year can run into the millions. Just the other day the wife and I were out for a walk and witnessed someone's pet cat attacking a quail's nest.


Actually the latest study ran into the billions:
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/outdoor-cats-are-prolific-killers-study-finds


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## EricABQ (Jul 10, 2012)

O.K., I went too far saying we should never kill a wild animal for just a mouthful of food. 

However, humans are long past the point where we need to eat whatever we can get our hands on. Between animals raised for food and game animals with healthy populations no one needs to be eating songbirds whether it be someone who thinks its their cultural right or some misguided foodie who wants to know what it tastes like. But, as in most things, reasonable people can disagree I suppose.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

The article in National Geographic was actually very balanced on the issue. But, the disturbing thing it made clear is that the killing of songbirds in certain countries - notably Albania - is going on on a massive scale, virtually unhindered. But, even in other countries that border the Mediterranean where it is illegal to do it, it's still going on at a rate much higher than ever before in history.

Modern technology, including that ability to use electronic devices to mimic attracting calls, are leading to outright devastation in some areas. And, these birds are usually flying through these countries during migration when they are already more tired and not at their peak energy levels.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

emiellucifuge said:


> Actually the latest study ran into the billions:
> http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/outdoor-cats-are-prolific-killers-study-finds


The article unfortunately does not include much detail, and I don't have time to go read the entire study. It seems to me one cannot really make blanket statements. In some areas the main problem is feral cats rather than tame ones. In others, even the tame ones may cause much damage. In still other areas I don't see that cats are any problem at all.

The main threat to wildlife is generally habitat destruction more than anything else. Build a city, and inevitably much of the native wildlife of the are will be pushed out, though there will also be some, especially some species of birds, that adapt well to city life, and cities will then host larger populations of those species than there were before the city. If cats then hunt those species, not much harm is done, or at least not more than the city has already done.

Rural areas will generally not support very large populations of cats, feral or otherwise. In areas where there used to be wild cats anyway, I don't think feral cats will do much harm. But places like Australia, and many islands, are very vulnerable, and it is usually in such places that cats do the most damage.


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