Something I was only vaguely aware of until I read this article, and something Torontonians can be proud of, is the city's bird friendly development guidelines, which consist of a number of simple suggestions builders and building managers can follow to cut down on the truly appalling number of birds killed each year (in the 100s of millions, continent-wide) by flying into glass fronted office towers.
A number of these suggestions can be applied at home as well. Back on the West coast we would lose a couple of hummingbirds a year, usually during mating season when they would get into fights around the feeders, until we took a little bit of white-tape and made a simple cross-hatched pattern with it on the outside of our kitchen windows. (You can also buy bird-shaped stick-ons, if you are worried about aesthetics. This way they don't mistake reflected trees for actual ones.
And the type of feeder that you suction-cup to your window also seems like a really bad idea.
These regulations should be mandatory for tall buildings in my opinion. There are so many bird species that are threatened with extinction, for so many reasons, including window collisions, and yet almost no one is aware of the problem. Another thing that needs to be done is the culling of nuisance birds like seagulls and crows, who's numbers have exploded due to their adaptability to humans. They feast on song birds eggs (crows) and baby birds that have just left the nest (crows and seagulls) and take a huge toll on their populations. Also, people need to keep their cats indoors for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteCrows in Toronto were nearly wiped out by West Nile (and Jays).
ReplyDeleteGreat, more songbirds for the neighbourhood cats to eat.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm all for open season on crows and seagulls. Should also include those grackle/starling things as well; they've completely supplanted just about every species of songbird.
ReplyDeleteI rather like crows, because they dress entirely in black.
ReplyDeleteCowbirds are the real bastards. And they're edge species (if I remember the term correctly, which means they thrive on new development (where you get edges between forest and open space).
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ReplyDeleteYes, cowbirds are a real problem. They lay their eggs in other birds nests, and the birds raise the cowbird chick as though it were their own. Of course, cowbirds have evolved to know that laying their eggs in the nests of species that are much smaller than themselves will give their chick a better chance of out-competing the original chicks, thus increasing their chances of survival.
ReplyDeleteCrows are pretty cool, I admit (and they're damn smart) but there are too many of them. I was in MB this past spring, and I rescued a baby squirrel from them, though it died the next day. I don't resent the crows; they're just doing what they were born to do. But because of humans, there are way too many of them (and other "edge species" as anon points out) and we have the responsibility to cull them.