We moved into our home in Portland, Oregon a few years ago, We love Portland and, by and large, we like our home. It's on a large lot that has fruit trees, and lots of different plant varieties. There are swatches of decorative grass, but no lawn. We have several bird feeders scattered about. There is a birdbath in the front and a pond with koi in the back. It's a place we expected to see lots of different kinds of birds.
Where birds are concerned, life in this place has been a disappointment. We see crows and blackbirds regularly, but only rarely any songbirds or hummingbirds. A squadron of rufus hummers did land in a flowered shrub next to our house one day, but sadly we only saw them that one time.
Why, when we live in an area that should be teeming with the chirping of songbirds, are we seeing virtually none of the little feathered buggers. When I was a boy, my family lived in about six different states over a twelve year period. We always saw and heard birds, while I was growing up in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Washington state.
Why are we not seeing any songbirds here in our nieghborhood in beautiful Portland, Oregon? Some are surely being scared away by the large and very territorial crows and blackbirds that live around here. Domestic cats likely account for some of the attrition in small bird numbers. A recent study estimated that the 85 million house cats in the U.S. kill as many as a billion or more small birds annually. Don't get me wrong, I like kitties. But, there's no denying they are hard wired to hunt. They are predators. They are going to stalk birds if they get the chance.
I'm guessing a big part of the problem with small, wild critters, feathered and otherwise, that try to eek out a living in a suburban residential environment, densely populated with humans, is exposure to toxic chemicals. I'm talking about the moss killers we put on our roofs and sidewalks. I'm talking about the pesticides and insecticides, and herbicides people use around their homes. When I go to the garden center, its just amazing to see aisle after aisle stocked to the gills with every kind of toxic chemical guaranteed to take the work out of lawn and garden care. I'm not carping against any use of lawn care products, but I do think society has gone way overboard with the use of stuff like Round up and Weed be Gone.
It's a lot easier to spray a little herbicide on a weed than it is to get on hands and knees and dig it out. The chemicals we use around our homes may be designed to acceptable levels of toxicity for humans, but small birds weighing a few ounces and having high metabolic rates are exceedingly vulnerable to these chemicals. To a substantial degree, the average suburban landscape has been turned into a toxic chemical wasteland.
We don't use chemicals on our property. We don't have a lawn. Our property is many varieties of trees, shrubs, and flowers, and ground cover. It's a little bit wild. That's the way we like it. Weeds are a problem. When they appear, we dig them up. I wish more people did it this way.
It pains me not to see any small birds in our neighborhood. The reasons for this seem pretty obvious. To me, it's a reflection of how seriously disconnected we humans are from the natural world.
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