Extinction

I saw on our local news tonight about Nightingales becoming rarer.
They were somewhere in Ipswich, (forgotten the name), and they were trapping them and fixing tracking devices to them.

They reckon some of the reason why they are disappearing is because of their habitat being destroyed, and also because of chemicals killing the insects the birds live on, and need for feeding their young.

I've never actually seen one live, or maybe I haven't recognised it if I have, but I would love to - and a cuckoo.

I wonder how many more of our creatures will die out over the next 50 years or so, and will new species gradually evolve to continue life?

Re: Extinction

Ive seen a few including the Thrush Nightingale, in places like Malta these are blasted from the skies by bastards with guns in the name of sport. Anything that flies is fair game, Turtle Doves are another species these murdering scum think is ok to destroy.

I have friends that go out and confront them during migration times, and a movement to stop people holidaying to put pressure on the governments has been active for a while. Its common on many regions of the continent, shot for sport not for food,

Re: Extinction

This rings a bell Nom. I believe I have heard something about this before.
I agree, it is both cruel and deplorable.
I cannot think the way these people do, so will never understand this blood lust they possess.

I suppose your friends are much like the equivalent to our hunt sabs are they?
I can't see cruelty like this stopping any time soon. Those sort of people do not see evil in what they do, and I don't know what would change them. Life is not precious to them - unless it's their own.

Re: Extinction

I would never got to Malta on principle. Parts of Italy, Spain & even France I believe the killing of song birds still goes on. There is hope as the younger generation are being educated it's wrong & taught it is against the law to do it. They don't need these birds to eat so the humans survive.

Re: Extinction

I haven't heard a Nightingale for year but I know a place well known locally where they can be heard singing.

Re: Extinction

A Cat - Poem by Edward Thomas - 1878 - 1917 England

She had a name among the children;
But no one loved though someone owned
Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime
And had her kittens duly drowned.

In Spring, nevertheless, this cat
Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales,
And birds of bright voice and plume and flight,
As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails.

I loathed and hated her for this;
One speckle on a thrush’s breast
Was worth a million such; and yet
She lived long, till God gave her rest.

Re: Extinction

Next door but ones cat who killed & ate three Bullfinches in our garden, died a few months later of liver failure. Poetic justice.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate cats but they are bird killers, most of them & I would never have a cat as a pet, unleess it was either a house cat or had a fenced & roofed off veranda to stalk around & was not out in the garden loose.

Re: Extinction

Im interested in what we are doing to our world, the reason i got into volunteer work with my local wildlife trust was a desire to see if i could at least maintain what we still had for my son when he grew up.

Some successes Otters have returned, but so much is disappearing at a frightening rate, Birds butterflies habitat have all reduced to mans stupidity.

Ive lightly broached environmental issues on a few occasion, but ive found not much response, yet if its a cat or dog, its very different.

I follow a group on twitter dedicated to the Extinction issue, its symbol is.





This site gives an idea of the rate of destruction that is going on.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/p...nction_crisis/

Re: Extinction

I don't think it's necessarily the case that people don't care Nom, I think for example, that maybe many people who were raised and live in big cities never see much in the way of natural wildlife, so the problems don't even occur to them.
More education in this field would help enormously, and beginning as a subject in school perhaps.

This must also be a problem which has gone on since the year dot, surely?
What we now think of as prehistoric animals were once alive and kicking, yet they became extinct, and new species gradually followed, which had adapted to the habitat and food sources at that time.

Will this evolution continue forever? Will new species, or specimens that have been 'tweaked' to adapt to current life, continue to replace the ones that can't survive anymore?

Look how excited researchers get if they discover a species either underwater or on land, or a new wildflower, or indeed any sort of creature.
I like to think that these findings will always continue, and life will go on, even if not with the same creatures we love and have grown up with.

Maybe people in a few hundred years time will be lamenting over losses of the future, exactly as we are doing today -
Who knows.

Re: Extinction

When I was a lad, the summer skies were darkened by giant flocks of peewits, also known as lapwings.

Now there are none.

The same with starlings, yellowhammers, goldfinches, long-tailed tits, wrens, kingfishers, and many more.
I would fall asleep at night listening to the mournful sounds of the curlew, or the booming calls of the bittern. We had owls nesting in the poplar trees of our garden.

They have all gone. The tapping of the woodpeckers, the sound of the cuckoo - they are only in my memory.