On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:55:03 -0000, "Tumbleweed"
wrote:


"Colonel Bloomer" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 17:20:45 +0000 (UTC), "W K"
wrote:


"Colonel Bloomer" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 11:59:32 +0000 (UTC), "W K"
wrote:


"Colonel Bloomer" wrote in message
.. .


Shame the RSPB are not inclined to spend some of our millions and do
some serious research into this decline

They do.

Really! where?

You may have seen, in this thread, mention of a "Kate" researching this.

She is having her research funded in part by the RSPB.
http://www.birdfood.co.uk/cj/project_hssparrow.htm

Not really an all guns blazing contribution is it, doubtful it even
reaches four figures in total. I'd have thought given the fact they
rake in £50million PA and spend £7million PA on advertising, they
could afford to at least show a real interest in finding out why the
situation is so serious and not only for sparrows.

Just out of interest, why is it 'serious'?

Because it is according to the stats and certainly in my part of south
london we are noticing serious declines in sparrows, five, ten years
ago there were hundreds I'm sure, now we are lucky to see a handful
each day, as for thrush, blackbird etc none for ages.

I see many birds now that I
never saw as a kid, including (perhaps not coincidentally) many species of
raptors and numerous magpies. If a part of the decline is due to that, and
another part due to us not having sparrows living in our house roofs, and a
further part due to farmers not feeding them by scattering grain all over
the fields when harvesting, then you could reasonably argue that the sparrow
pop of (say) 1900-1950 was artificially boosted over what it would be in an
environment with no human interference, since there would be far fewer
artificial (i.e. houses) nesting sites , much less food, and many more
predators, in such an environment. Maybe the 'natural' sparrow pop is
closer to what it is now, than it was 50 years ago?


You make a very good point. This is why it would be nice to see some
of our RSPB funding spent on serious research so that we may have a
definitive answer.

I feel this is a bit more than the natural yoyo cycle of populations.