ENVR My Birds Have Gone Missing

bw

bw

Fringe Ranger
Ok, this is strange. I have not seen a bird in two days. We have robins constantly, hummers are banging on their feeders, finches rooting around in the grass. There is nothing today. I have two suet feeders out and they are unchanged since yesterday morning. Anyone else suddenly not seeing birds? We're in Kitsap County opposite Seattle.
 
bw

bw

Fringe Ranger
Predators take our birds all the time. We have owls that kill some, and I'm always finding little feather collections. This is new. I don't know of any predator that tries for hummers.
 
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gillmanNSF

Veteran Member
Further south on the left coast, my birds, mainly sparrows and finches, are still around and have eaten about an inches worth of thistle seed since this morning. They're at the feeders even when it's raining heavily. Hopefully there isn't some avian virus going around out west on the coast, or elsewhere. In San Francisco, CA.
 
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Bob the Builder

Contributing Member
Hundreds of robins here in south Idaho. More than I've seen in several years. Some english sparrows and starlings but not many yet. Lots of resident pigeons year round.
Grass is greening and trees are budding. No flowers yet anywhere but the honey bees are looking.
 
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Wildwood

Veteran Member
According to all the bigfoot videos on YT, the birds and all the other little animals leave when there's a sasquatch nearby.

Seriously, I'm with all the others on the predatory birds. We've been overrun with owls for the last several years. Add in a few hawks and eagles and it's no wonder we aren't seeing near the birds of any kind that we use to see.
 
babysteps

babysteps

Veteran Member
bw said:
We don't have either one. Waiting for other PNW members to weigh in.
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Willamette Valley OR also. My dogs and cats have been acting normally enough that nothing caught my attention.

One of the sheep had the zoomies today, lol. And the cows tried to argue for a double helping of breakfast. Nothing really out of the ordinary with any of them.

I'll agree with Pinecone, I do think the birds were pretty sparse today but we have had a decent storm move in this evening, and the wind and rain are holding steady, so they may have just taken cover.
 
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Pinecone

Has No Life - Lives on TB
babysteps said:
Willamette Valley OR also. My dogs and cats have been acting normally enough that nothing caught my attention.

One of the sheep had the zoomies today, lol. And the cows tried to argue for a double helping of breakfast. Nothing really out of the ordinary with any of them.

I'll agree with Pinecone, I do think the birds were pretty sparse today but we have had a decent storm move in this evening, and the wind and rain are holding steady, so they may have just taken cover.
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Hope you're feeling better. I can't imagine a sheep with the zoomies. LOL
 
V

Voortrekker

Veteran Member
I saw two crows and a sparrow at Jubitz Truck Stop in Portland, OR on Tues. They were the black crows, not the other ones.
 
Creedmoor

Creedmoor

Tempus Fugit
East side of the Cascades. Lots of robins, magpies, starlings, crows, eagles and hawks here. All three house cats acting in their normal weird ways.
 
P

Pinecone

Has No Life - Lives on TB
The hummers are back and fighting over the feeders this morning. The robins are still hiding. They're probably in the forest, sheltering from the rain. Willamette Valley, OR.
 
mzkitty

mzkitty

I give up.
Early this morning, there were song birds, and the robins came back a couple of days ago. Upstate NY.

It must really be Spring finally.
 
Griz3752

Griz3752

Retired, practising Curmudgeon
bw said:
Ok, this is strange. I have not seen a bird in two days. We have robins constantly, hummers are banging on their feeders, finches rooting around in the grass. There is nothing today. I have two suet feeders out and they are unchanged since yesterday morning. Anyone else suddenly not seeing birds? We're in Kitsap County opposite Seattle.
Click to expand...
They moved East - my wife's feeders need to be replenshid x2 a day and we went to measures to keep the flying pigs (aka Doves) off the trough.
We're in 38105 so, a fair bit away from you.
 
packyderms_wife

packyderms_wife

Neither here nor there.
Old Gray Mare said:
There's a planetary alinement going on. That sometimes correlates to earthquakes.
Click to expand...

And according to SuspiciousObservers the Earth was hit by some sort of cosmic wave that ejected from some star far far away, yesterday. It'll be curious to see what happens geologically in the next couple of days.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQZuXSra92c


RT 2:39

Brightest Gamma Burst Ever, Electrical Anomalies in the Crust | S0 News Apr.1.2023​

 
bw

bw

Fringe Ranger
Here it is Sunday. We've seen one robin, one flicker and one hummer since last Wednesday. Creepy. My sisters on Mercer Island and in Snoqualmie say the birds seem normal there. My neighbor says it's been very sparse on their place the last few days, now that I mention it. Nothing in local news. Can't find an active bird forum for this area.

Both suet cakes are nearly gone, so they'd been out near a week before the birds vanished. They aren't a likely culprit, and of course the hummers don't touch them. Random debris falls on the ground and there's a mouse tunnel along the fence where the feeders hang. The mice normally scarf up suet, but it's lying all over the place. This suggests the mice have gone missing too, so I've baited a couple mouse traps as a test. Science!

I'm thinking it might be a pesticide overspray or something along those lines, but it's nothing I'm doing. We have eagles and hawks, but that's nothing new. No radiation, so it's apparently not something radioactive vented from Bangor. Maybe it's a curse. Maybe they got sucked into the time-warp that the clock is counting down to.
 
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summerthyme

Administrator
_______________
bw said:
Here it is Sunday. We've seen one robin, one flicker and one hummer since last Wednesday. Creepy. My sisters on Mercer Island and in Snoqualmie say the birds seem normal there. My neighbor says it's been very sparse on their place the last few days, now that I mention it. Nothing in local news. Can't find an active bird forum for this area.

Both suet cakes are nearly gone, so they'd been out near a week before the birds vanished. They aren't a likely culprit, and of course the hummers don't touch them. Random debris falls on the ground and there's a mouse tunnel along the fence where the feeders hang. The mice normally scarf up suet, but it's lying all over the place. This suggests the mice have gone missing too, so I've baited a couple mouse traps as a test. Science!

I'm thinking it might be a pesticide overspray or something along those lines, but it's nothing I'm doing. We have eagles and hawks, but that's nothing new. No radiation, so it's apparently not something radioactive vented from Bangor. Maybe it's a curse. Maybe they got sucked into the time-warp that the clock is counting down to.
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It is interesting, and I wouldn't mind if you keep us updated. I do think you covered ALL the bases in your last paragraph!!

Summerthyme
 
MaisieD

MaisieD

1984 is not fiction.
Griz3752 said:
They moved East - my wife's feeders need to be replenshid x2 a day and we went to measures to keep the flying pigs (aka Doves) off the trough.
We're in 38105 so, a fair bit away from you.
Click to expand...
How do you keep the doves from taking over your feeders? I love my birds, but the doves can be a pain so are the blackbirds!
In February we had one robin who stayed in our back yard for the whole month. He hung out with the cat birds (who are very entertaining), painted buntings, sparrows, cardinals, redheaded woodpeckers, mocking birds, titmice, doves, and blackbirds.

We are located near Canaveral National Seashore, which is a migratory stopover for many different species of birds. Right now the birds are nesting so they come to eat, take a bath, and then go tend to their young. I started a meal worm project so I can give the birds a treat.
I love my birds, no matter what is happening in the world, watching them brings me peace and reminds me that God is in control. He made these beautiful birds.
My next endeavor is to try to start a ladybug project to deal with the aphids in my butterfly garden.
If my backyard wasn't full of birds then I would know something isn't kosher!
 
Griz3752

Griz3752

Retired, practising Curmudgeon
MaisieD said:
How do you keep the doves from taking over your feeders? I love my birds, but the doves can be a pain so are the blackbirds!
In February we had one robin who stayed in our back yard for the whole month. He hung out with the cat birds (who are very entertaining), painted buntings, sparrows, cardinals, redheaded woodpeckers, mocking birds, titmice, doves, and blackbirds.

We are located near Canaveral National Seashore, which is a migratory stopover for many different species of birds. Right now the birds are nesting so they come to eat, take a bath, and then go tend to their young. I started a meal worm project so I can give the birds a treat.
I love my birds, no matter what is happening in the world, watching them brings me peace and reminds me that God is in control. He made these beautiful birds.
My next endeavor is to try to start a ladybug project to deal with the aphids in my butterfly garden.
If my backyard wasn't full of birds then I would know something isn't kosher!
Click to expand...
Put the feeders sort of under cover so the doves can't fly in/land and make sure there's no rail or similar for them to sidle up to the food.

Blackbirds, for whatever reason, are somewhat rare in our neighbourhood (Midtown Memphis overlooking the Hospital district) but it could be the traffic. We have an abundance of robins, wrens, sparrows, quite a few cardinals and last year a bluebird for a couple of days. Not many wood peckers in Urban Memphis; peckerwoods however do abound.
 
mudlogger

mudlogger

Veteran Member
Not that I want to board the bird flu train, but if it's in your area and it's jumped to mammals, that could explain where the mice have gone. They'd be exposed eating the suet/seed droppings.

When I had a parrot store, I advised customers to not even carry their feeders into the house due to the risk of disease transmission. I had one customer (well, two) that had gotten psittacosis from hanging a banner under a bridge...his face was up where the pigeons roosted. He was sick 6 months, and they finally figured it out when he started getting violent.
The treatment? Tetracycline, but no one thinks of bird fever these days.

Folks used to die from it before anti-biotics.
 
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