A Review on Martha

The Passenger Pigeon was once the most numerous bird on the planet, probably by a huge margin. The statistics that Mark Avery recounts on population size, breeding colonies, roosts and migrating flocks are simply mind-boggling, completely dwarfing anything we can see today. There were almost certainly somewhere between five and ten billion Passenger Pigeons in North America early in the nineteenth century.

Mark Avery provides a very useful digest of the vast literature on this species and comments on various aspects of Passenger Pigeon ecology, its dependence on native broadland forest and its mast production and statistics on population dynamics. He discusses habitat loss and the unbelievable slaughter of the birds (for food) in the 2nd half of the 19th century.

The story is a tragic one and well told, the story of a man-made extinction. Martha was the last surviving Passenger Pigeon and died 100 years ago in captivity, in Cincinatti zoo. Martha's message to us, so well reinforced by Avery, is that we should do our utmost to make sure that such an event cannot happen again.

Essential reading for anyone concerned with conservation, habitat change, loss of important food plants, modern farming methods and indiscriminate shooting. It is easy to say that the Turtle Dove will not become the new Passenger Pigeon - but can we be sure?

A Message From Martha

A Message From Martha is the title of a book recently published by Bloomsbury; written by Mark Avery it catalogues the demise of the Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius. Mark writes that we should remember the passenger pigeon because of the largest-scale human-caused extinction in history. The passenger pigeon is among the most famous of American birds, but not because of its beauty, or its 60-mile-an-hour flight speed. But for its extinction from a population of more than 5 billion birds, in the early to mid 19th century, to zero in 1914. 100 years ago this week, the very last pigeon of her kind died in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha, and her passing merits our close attention today.

Mercilessly slaughtered by the tens of millions at breeding colonies in the Northern USA and at huge wintertime roosts in the South during the post-Civil War era, passenger pigeons were shipped by trainloads to dinner tables in homes and restaurants across the East. Their population fell from biblical numbers at midcentury to tiny, aimless flocks in 1890. By around 1900 the few birds that remained were all in captivity. The last male died in 1910, leaving Martha as a barren relic of past abundance.

Martha was the last to die. She was thought to be 29 years old and had never lived in the wild. She is now in the Smithsonian.

At times I found myself reading Avery's book with a lump in my throat. How could this happen? Or be allowed to happen? The statistics on population size, breeding colonies, roosts and migration flocks are simply mind-boggling, completely dwarfing anything we can see today. The Passenger Pigeon was capable of flying at 60 m.p.h. Imagine a flock recorded as being a mile wide, flying overhead for four hours, blanking out the sun - a flock 240 miles long. It stretches the bounds of credulity. And yet so it was.

John Fitzpatrick of Cornell Lab for Ornithology said: We need to imagine Martha asking us, “Have you learned anything from my passing?” Timely conservation action really does work, even for species that have reached alarmingly low numbers. The word 'timely' though, needs to be emphasised. It is easy to say that the Turtle Dove will not become the new Passenger Pigeon - but can we be sure?

I would suggest that 'A Message From Martha' is required reading for anyone interested in conservation and biodiversity and the inevitable fate of many of our endangered species if we don't act now.

If it flies, it dies

Chilling words aren't they? This is the Maltese hunter's chilling motto: "If it flies, it dies". Here is my opinion, morons of Malta: the wanton massacre of migrant birds is an act of desecration and sacrilege. It is not a sport or a tradition - it is mass murder. And many of the millions of birds you shoot are not killed. They are maimed and die agonising, slow deaths. You so called 'hunters' disgust me. You use our migrating birds for target practice. You don't shoot for food, you shoot for fun. Each year you kill millions of migrant birds as they arrive over Malta, often exhausted and looking for landfall to rest and feed. And then they come into your gunsights. And it shows that you don't give a fuck about the devastation you wreak with this appalling destruction of our wildlife.

Malta is a member of the EU, which has banned Spring Hunting and yet Malta has been granted permission to ignore the law. Why? The 'hunters' claim their traditional right to "harvest" Turtle Doves and Quail, which used to be amongst the commonest migrants. But not any more. I cannot recall the last time I saw a Turtle Dove or heard a Quail calling. No need to wonder why. You monsters shoot anything: hen harriers, marsh harriers, kites, kestrels, black winged stilts, herons - anything that flies.

There is however some hope. The people of Malta want to deal with this issue. Through the hard work of BirdLife Malta a public referendum has been called for, through the gathering of 40,000 signatures on a petition. The weak Maltese government is now looking to hold a referendum in Spring 2015 and this should, if people power wins, bring about a ban.

Bill Oddie visited Malta this Spring and made a film that can be viewed here: http://www.league.org.uk/our-campaigns/shooting/the-shooting-of-migratory-birds-in-malta/film-shooting-of-migratory-birds-in-malta-2014

Please watch this film and then if you can please donate to the cause to stop this cruelty once and for all.

UK's Wild Bird Population Continues to Decline

The number of wild birds in the UK is still falling despite efforts to protect them by changing farming practices. Conservationists have urged the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, to use the money newly available from the EU's common agricultural policy to step up protection measures.

Since 2003 there has been a 13% decline in the population of farmland birds. In the five years to the end of 2012 the decline was 8% overall. The decline has slowed according to the Wild Bird Indicator statistics released by the government last Thursday and some species are in better health than they were in the 1970s when data began to be comprehensively collected. However, conservationists (including me) are concerned that the drop in numbers is continuing with a halving of farmland bird numbers in the past 40 years. Woodland bird numbers are down 17%.

Turtle Doves have had their lowest level of sightings since records began. Lapwing numbers are down by nearly two thirds since 1970, while Corn Buntings are down 90% in the same period and the number of Skylarks is down by well over half. These are truly alarming statistics.

Farmland birds suffer from intensive agriculture as farmers often remove or drastically cut back the hedges and trees where many of them live. Pesticides can leave them with less prey and a lack of wide field margins cuts down on habitat.

The decline in farmland birds has slowed and wildlife friendly farmers who put conservation measures in place on their land are to be congratulated for their hard work. But funding must be there for these measures to continue. Under reforms to the CAP that were agreed this summer our government has the ability to divert some of the millions of pounds available (which come ultimately from taxpayers) to environmental stewardship schemes to reward farmers for good practice. Needless to say, Owen Paterson has still not said how he intends to allocate the funding and given the governments freedom of action under the new rules, much of it could go to farmers not based on their practices but on the amount of land they farm, as other subsidies are.  Without Paterson's help farmland wildlife will continue to struggle along with those farmers trying to help.