• Destide
    link
    fedilink
    English
    01 year ago

    I know a lot of people don’t like Andrew Lloyd Webber but killing yourself is a bit much

  • @perishthethought@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    01 year ago

    3.5 billion birds are killed in North America per year? I didn’t know anywhere near that number even existed.

    But then again…

    Wikipedia says there are about 7.5 million square miles in the US and Canada, so that’s over 400 birds killed per square mile, per year, on average.

    That’s amazing, no?

    • Match!!
      link
      fedilink
      English
      01 year ago

      Misconception. Birdkiller Georg has 3 billion dead birds a year and is also known as New York City

      • @perishthethought@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        01 year ago

        I checked again and yeah, it’s more like 9.5 million square miles, so an average of more like 370 bird deaths per square mile, per year. But now that I know that includes chickens and turkeys, and Mexico and Greenland and the Bahamas, it’s OK.

    • @pafu@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      01 year ago

      There are more than 8 billion chickens slaughtered every year in the US alone, to give some perspective.

  • @Xenon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    0
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    On a serious note, the problem with wind turbines is not the total number of birds they strike but the species. Larger birds of prey seem particularly susceptible. Tough this risk can be easily mitigated by not placing the wind turbines directly in their primary habitat or migration paths.

    • @subtext@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      0
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I was going to say, I doubt your pet tabby is killing any California condors at any appreciable rate.

      Amazing how easy it is to bias people with data though.

  • @Lizardking27@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    01 year ago

    Keeping your cats indoors won’t solve anything. Housecats aren’t destroying the bird population, feral cats are. If you want to help, volunteer with your local vet or animal control to capture, spay/neuter, then re-release stray cats.

      • That study’s been going around for years in the media, but mainly because it’s sensational. If you actually read the article, I’d hardly say it’s very convincing, or very accurate. Also, this.

        Existing estimates of mortality from cat predation are speculative and not based on scientific data13,14,15,16 or, at best, are based on extrapolation of results from a single study18. In addition, no large-scale mortality estimates exist for mammals, which form a substantial component of cat diets.

      • @Lizardking27@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        0
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        “About a third of the problem” So, not the primary cause (or solution.)

        https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380

        “We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality.”

        The article also states the following regarding more popular studies in the media involving pet cats: “The magnitude of mortality they cause in mainland areas remains speculative, with large-scale estimates based on non-systematic analyses and little consideration of scientific data”

      • @MissJinx@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        01 year ago

        Indoor cats are not a problem because they are indoors. Outdoor cats thar come inside sometimes are a problem indeed but most of them were not adopted they just apeared out of nowhere and you now think it’s your cat. So it was feral at some point or at least was born from one.

  • ChaoticNeutralCzech
    link
    fedilink
    01 year ago

    What’s up with comms towers? High-voltage AM antennas are not that abundant anymore. Are birds getting cooked close to high-power transmitters? Shot to avoid interference with crucial military infrastructure? Is 5G real?

    • @n7gifmdn@lemmy.caOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      01 year ago

      Well the image claims to be based on data from 2015, so no 5G was not real at that time.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech
        link
        fedilink
        0
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        That was a joke, and so was the previous sentence (a reference to the birdsarentreal conspiracy. Seriously, how do comms towers harm birds?

        Edit: collisions with tall AM towers’ guy wires

    • @kurwa@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      01 year ago

      I think windows are that high because birds think they can go through them, they probably don’t think they can go through buildings, but who knows?

      • KillingTimeItself
        link
        fedilink
        English
        01 year ago

        i would assume so, but most sky scrapers are entirely glass, and those technically aren’t windows from the outside. So do those count?

        Though i guess they also have air patterns surrounding them that would make it difficult to bonk into.

    • @AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      01 year ago

      Not sure if you’re making a joke, but windows kill birds because they’re transparent and birds fly into them not realizing it’s there. The rest of the building doesn’t really kill birds because they won’t fly into it.