The Messenger

I've been thinking that if you possessed the ability to identify sundry song birds while walking through the woods, that walk would be a much more rewarding experience.

There are so many.

I've always loved seeing bears and raccoons, deer and foxes, skunks, chipmunks, minks, but learning more about song birds now seems like the best way to expand my knowledge of the forest, which is in need of expansion, in the interests of lifelong learning.

Because there are so many of them, it's difficult to notice if species are declining if you no longer hear the song you can't identify; there are still plenty of other songs being sung, so it still seems like song bird populations aren't threatened or decreasing every year.

But according to Su Rynard's documentary The Messenger, song bird populations have been decreasing every year for at least 40 years, windows, cats, habitat loss, climate change and chemical insecticides thought to be largely responsible.

I know the inclusion of cats sounds odd.

Aren't cats and birds just interacting as they always have, like lions and zebras or wolves and deer?

It's not quite that simple, as The Messenger suggests, by lucidly pointing out that house cats are actually invasive species, brought with humans wherever they go.

If house cats are thought to be lions and song birds zebras, it's like North America had billions of zebras and no lions until domestic cats showed up on the scene, stealthily silencing many bird songs.

It's recommended that cat owners keep their cats indoors for longer periods of time, or all the time, for even if it may seem like your cat doesn't eat many birds, cats are annually responsible for 1.4 billion bird deaths, and 32 song bird species are now extinct because of cats.

The Messenger also points out how the bizarro French practice of eating ortolans whole, possibly other song birds as well, needs to stop. It's like hunting elephants for ivory. Ortolan numbers have plummeted and people are continuing to eat them, as poachers continue to kill elephants, extinction looming on the horizon, it's disgusting, plain and simple.

It's not just a trifling matter when a species disappears; ecosystems can be harshly effected.

The Messenger mentions how Mao's ludicrous campaign to kill all the tree sparrows in China because they ate grain resulted in 30 million human deaths. The tree sparrows also ate insects that ate crops and without the tree sparrows to eat them, thirty million people starved to death.

It's thought that ariel insectivores are declining in Europe and North America, song birds that live around farms and grasslands, because farmers are using neonicotinoids to kill insects. It's believed that these chemicals have no effect on the aquatic environments they saturate, but this may not be the case, and they may be killing additional insect populations in said environments which aerial insectivores eat to survive.

If farmers can find ways to encourage song birds to live on their farms, perhaps they wouldn't need chemical insecticides. Song birds and bats. According to The Messenger, song birds also excel at distributing seeds and pollinating plants, while forming links with other species that cultivate a healthy ecosystem. It's also nice having them around, hearing them sing, watching them perch and scavenge about.

Windows and lights are also responsible for prematurely ending the lives of many a song bird. Many of them can't see windows and fly straight into them. There are ways to adjust windows to make them bird friendly, notably placing distractions on them that help song birds to see that they're flying into a window rather than continuing on a safe path. Lights being left on at night near windows often attract song birds as well, who often migrate at night.

Climate change.

On the plus side, Icarus Technology allows people to track song birds as they migrate around the world. It must be fascinating following their flight paths as they travel from one continent to the next.

If song bird populations have been decreasing for decades, it's a sign that the phenomenon isn't cyclical, and something can be done about it.

The Messenger travels across the globe interviewing passionate song bird enthusiasts to help people better understand these oft overlooked naturalistic wonders.

Their songs have inspired and are inspiring great musicians. Their colouring is stunning. They play productive roles in nature. And these tiny creatures the size of one's hand travel back and forth from continent to continent to the same precise seemingly impossible to find location year after year.

If millions of people kept their cats inside for longer hours, adjusted their windows to make them bird friendly, and kept lights out when they're not using them, billions of song bird lives may be saved.

Ecotourism is flourishing here and there.

Why not apply that concept to suburban and urban environments?

The ecoburbs?

Bet they're already doing it in Germany . . .