By Martin Hickman
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
LONDON
- The most popular songbirds are being seen less in gardens, the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said yesterday, sparking wider concerns about
Britain's environment.
The Big Garden Birdwatch Survey carried out by
50,000 RSPB members in January this year showed that numbers of starlings and
house sparrows had halved in the past 10 years.
Although 9.3 starlings
were found on average in gardens in 1991, by 2001 the number had dropped to 4.2.
Over the same period, house sparrows fell from 7.8 to 4.0 while chaffinches were
down by 2.5 to 2.0.
The RSPB's annual survey showed that while the most
popular avian visitors to gardens had fallen, other species had stayed stable
or even increased. Blackbirds rose during the period by 0.4 to 2.8, while robins
edged up 0.1 to 1.5.
WORRYING DECLINE
The RSPB said that while it
was difficult to estimate the overall bird population, numbers did appear to be
falling because of agricultural advances.
"In a nutshell, modern farming
is bad news for birds," said spokesman Mike Everett. "There is a loss of wild
habitat, the scrubbing out of hedges and hedgerows; the use of pesticides reduce
the supply of food to birds."
"Birds are essentially an environmental barometer,
a bit like canaries in a coalmine. If birds numbers are going down you ought to
find out what is going on."
Chris Mead, of the British Trust for Ornithology,
said that bird populations in gardens were not doing "too badly" in general. However
he said that was because birds had been dispersed to gardens because declining
food in fields.
Modern farming, the ornithologist said, was obliterating
England's "green and pleasant land".
"The green and pleasant can actually
be wiped out, you might as well concrete it, because there's nothing for the birds
at all."
Mead urged people to leave food out for birds all year round,
not just in the winter. |
