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Waterfall Birding

Grassland – hardest hit habitat

ChAOS IN ThE

BIRD WORLD

By James Clarke, Pictures by Mary Broadley

Agriculture and urbanization are destroying habitats.

A ccording to the journal, west to fly ever eastwards, most of 70s and have now lost more than

one-third of their population.
Science, North America
them to die over the Indian Ocean.
has lost three billion birds
since 1970. Grassland Over the last 10 years, says Holden, That we have a similar trend in South
birds are the hardest hit. data collected from weather radar Africa is hardly surprising given the
stations that scan the night skies, massive destruction of our grassland.
South Africa has a similar problem. and from professional institutions Just note the horrific destruction of
across the world, indicate a 14 percent grassland along the N4 to Kruger
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and drop in migrating volumes of Park for open cast coal mining to
American Bird Conservancy noted a swallows and other migrants. feed Eskom’s power stations. Mealies
29% decline in bird populations across and sunflower production take up a
diverse groups and habitats – from In Canada and the US, grassland birds lot of what is left. In the 1980s I was
songbirds to long-distance migratory were hit especially hard, with a 53% involved in surveying the coal mining
birds such as swallows and backyard reduction in population. Shorebirds damage and learned the land can
birds like sparrows. It amounts to a loss were already at low numbers in the never be rehabilitated for agriculture.
of one in four birds in the last 50 years.
Red-headed finches
Emily Holden in The Guardian
reported that scientists are calling it
‘a widespread ecological crisis’. She
reports that the population losses are
consistent with what scientists have
noted among insects and amphibians.

Insects? I noticed the first butterflies
in my garden only in mid January.
Then came the blizzard of small white
butterflies (Belenois aurota) on their
annual, lemming-like migration from
their breeding grounds in the dry

32 Waterfall Issue 3 2020