"D Russell" wrote in message
...

"Tumbleweed" wrote in message
.. .
snip

If magpies eat the eggs and not the adults, what would you expect to
see?
Sparrows calling the police?
50,000 sparrow hawks is still quite rare, people are saying there is a
shortage of sparrows yet there are millions of them!

--
Tumbleweed

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True there are still millions of sparrows, but there are only, something
like 50% of the millions there were a few years ago.

Ah sorry, I didnt mean to say that wasnt an issue, but just because there's
a decline doesnt mean there is a problem, as we know, the proportion of
predators has risen hugely in the past decades, maybe that is part at least
of the reason, rather than the usual immediate jumping to conclusions about
pesticides, global warming, etc. (and not to say they arent the cause
either, just lets not immediately jump to conclusions)


Part of the problem is the perception of there being so many left that we
have nothing to worry about, but it's the vast percentage decline which
has
people wondering what's going on. If this rate of decline were to continue
then they'd be none left at all in 5-10 years.

" In the space of one hundred and seventy six years the Lower Mississippi
has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of
a trifle over a mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who
is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period,
just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi was upwards of
one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf
of Mexico like a fishing-pole. And by the same token any person can see that
seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be
only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo [Illinois] and New Orleans
will have joined their streets together and be plodding comfortably along
under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something
fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out
of such a trifling investment of fact"

[ mark Twain 1884 ]


--
Tumbleweed

Remove my socks for email address