For the Birds

 “ Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, so are we.” - Roger Tory Peterson

It seems too good to be true. The binoculars are of excellent quality, and available at my politically correct outdoor gear cooperative at a very amazing price. I need a lightweight pair for birdwatching, so I’m delighted to find them.

Off I go, out into the world with my new powerful eyes, only to be reminded once again that although I have a better tool than ever for seeing them, my beautiful bird friends are vanishing before my eyes. 

My friend Saturn, a birdwatcher since the 1960s, tells of seeing much greater flocks of birds than now. She talks about driving through clouds of bugs, car windshields covered with bugs every year, day after day. These days you hardly ever see a bug hit the windshield. The bug eating birds must have far less food now. 

Where are the birds?

When the frogs hatched every year, she saw thousands hopping in the grass. They were so numerous that it was difficult to avoid stepping on them, with dozens of flattened baby frog bodies lying dried on every driveway in the neighborhood. Decades before her time, there are reports of massive bird flocks blacking out the sky in daytime for days, as they migrated over.


She says every kind of bird she used to see, now is either seen in smaller flocks, fewer numbers, or has just gone missing altogether.

I too, have noticed a dramatic change in bird numbers in my area. Some have moved north, to adjust to the warming climate. We do have a few new species who are appearing for the first time, moving up here from the south.


But even along the trails and in the parks where I have walked daily now for twelve years, observing the local birds, the effect is striking. Where I might have at first seen twenty of a given species, I saw only ten several years ago, and now I’m lucky to see two or three. Or any at all. I have even noticed that formerly extremely common invasive birds species like starlings and house sparrows are crashing. It is frightening and disheartening.

Scientists blame pesticides, habitat loss, window design, and house cats for the bird apocalypse. I would also add to this list, another suspect, the radiation from our WIFI and phone cell towers. Just since cell phone use became ubiquitous, I have noticed about a fifty percent diminished bird population in the city and countryside where I walk. This is year over year, same place and times of day and times of year.

These sources of radiation are about to increase greatly if we allow yet a new frequency type to blanket our environment, five G.  Perhaps the birds’ food, the insects, are crashing too, but nobody much notices or cares. We do already know these frequencies mess with the brains of birds and bugs, and maybe, probably, our cells and brains too.

We need not move to this five G thing at all. We can go the route of fiber optic cable instead. Who cares if the movie loads in a half second or several? Self driving cars are foolish and dangerous. The only other use of this proposed massive blanket of five G radiation is to, at last, secure for governments and corporations, a net of real time surveillance over everyone. We sure don’t need that!

How very ironic that the industrial machine that brings such beautiful tools as my new binoculars is also the cause implementing the demise of the very birds I seek to watch and appreciate with them! 

How very ironic that the rise of invasive and noisy artificial birds, the drones, coincides with the disappearance of the real birds! The way we are going, it will not be a silent spring, but a century, and not silent, but filled with the roar and constant buzzing of deadly machinery. 

How very poignant, and how sad.


I wonder if we can move to a sustainable and non toxic planetary infrastructure before it is too late?

“If had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.” -Charles Lindbergh