True. I have not seen them in the Western part of Belgium for many years now. It is really sad.
Flanders (one of the Belgian regions) where I live is possibly the least forested region in Europe. We have cut down all the trees and until a couple of years ago were mowing the grass everywhere even where people do not go to. It caused a massive loss of animal life. Now the situation is gradually changing, new forests are being planted and grass is left to grow wild in many parts so that insects and little animals have shelter.
The positive impact of this is almost immediately visible. We have definitely more butterflies, bumblebees, dragonflies and little animals like dormice, hedgehogs, frogs… Once the forests mature, the birds and more animals will return. It is probably the most beautiful experience to see how nature restores itself. Then you understand how harmful we are as species and how we should not interfere with nature because we are killing it.
This surprises me, every year I have an army of sparrows nesting in my roof, the chicken coop-run roof, and the hedges in the front garden. They seem to particularly like the St Johns Wort hedge the best. However I’ve noticed a drop in blue tits, wagtails and goldfinch (European, not American) the past few years.
birds aren’t real though
Like crows and pigeons, they thrive in the cities. No fear of humans, they come close to an arm’s length and wait for an opportunity to steal food. All the nearby tourist traps have huge populations of sparrows.
In the Netherlands I hardly saw them for years but now they are more common again.
People here: “I didn’t saw them since…”
Meanwhile every time I walk near a bush a dozen of them fly away.
When I went to live in Berlin for a couple of months and what really jumped out for me there was just how many more sparrows there were in residential areas than in London or even Lisbon.
I was expecting there to be more sparrows in a warmer place like Lisbon than in Berlin (which is 10 to 15 degrees colder in average) and it was the reverse and seemingly by quite some distance – within maybe 100 meters of the place I lived in there, there were 3 or 4 different groups of sparrows.
From what I can tell this was because in Berlin a lot of people had bird feeds in the balconies of their appartments whilst that is a lot rarer is London and even worse so in Lisbon. Also Berlin has a lot more green spaces behind and between buildings than Lisbon or London, although the latter out in zone 2 and beyond has a lot of green spaces because of all the small gardens in the rows and rows of houses that make up most of the Greater London outermost areas.
Yes, there are clearly less sparrows in major cities in Latvia, then there were before. Bigger birds drive them from the cities, and kill them as prey. Before, biggest populations of seagulls and crows were in coastal and farm areas respectively. Now, they all moved to the cities, because mountains of waste produced by humans is more accessible as food sourse for them. And they often hunt sparrows too. Add overall pollution, noise and light pollution, and sparrows just cannot compete with that and bigger, more agressive birds.
Could observe it too. Some years ago they were everywhere. Not as many recently
Insect apocalipse -> bird apocalipse
Has some checked that Mao isn’t flying around Europe?
12 comments
True. I have not seen them in the Western part of Belgium for many years now. It is really sad.
Flanders (one of the Belgian regions) where I live is possibly the least forested region in Europe. We have cut down all the trees and until a couple of years ago were mowing the grass everywhere even where people do not go to. It caused a massive loss of animal life. Now the situation is gradually changing, new forests are being planted and grass is left to grow wild in many parts so that insects and little animals have shelter.
The positive impact of this is almost immediately visible. We have definitely more butterflies, bumblebees, dragonflies and little animals like dormice, hedgehogs, frogs… Once the forests mature, the birds and more animals will return. It is probably the most beautiful experience to see how nature restores itself. Then you understand how harmful we are as species and how we should not interfere with nature because we are killing it.
This surprises me, every year I have an army of sparrows nesting in my roof, the chicken coop-run roof, and the hedges in the front garden. They seem to particularly like the St Johns Wort hedge the best. However I’ve noticed a drop in blue tits, wagtails and goldfinch (European, not American) the past few years.
birds aren’t real though
Like crows and pigeons, they thrive in the cities. No fear of humans, they come close to an arm’s length and wait for an opportunity to steal food. All the nearby tourist traps have huge populations of sparrows.
In the Netherlands I hardly saw them for years but now they are more common again.
People here: “I didn’t saw them since…”
Meanwhile every time I walk near a bush a dozen of them fly away.
When I went to live in Berlin for a couple of months and what really jumped out for me there was just how many more sparrows there were in residential areas than in London or even Lisbon.
I was expecting there to be more sparrows in a warmer place like Lisbon than in Berlin (which is 10 to 15 degrees colder in average) and it was the reverse and seemingly by quite some distance – within maybe 100 meters of the place I lived in there, there were 3 or 4 different groups of sparrows.
From what I can tell this was because in Berlin a lot of people had bird feeds in the balconies of their appartments whilst that is a lot rarer is London and even worse so in Lisbon. Also Berlin has a lot more green spaces behind and between buildings than Lisbon or London, although the latter out in zone 2 and beyond has a lot of green spaces because of all the small gardens in the rows and rows of houses that make up most of the Greater London outermost areas.
Yes, there are clearly less sparrows in major cities in Latvia, then there were before. Bigger birds drive them from the cities, and kill them as prey. Before, biggest populations of seagulls and crows were in coastal and farm areas respectively. Now, they all moved to the cities, because mountains of waste produced by humans is more accessible as food sourse for them. And they often hunt sparrows too. Add overall pollution, noise and light pollution, and sparrows just cannot compete with that and bigger, more agressive birds.
Could observe it too. Some years ago they were everywhere. Not as many recently
Insect apocalipse -> bird apocalipse
Has some checked that Mao isn’t flying around Europe?
Keep your cats inside, folks.