Audubon: US bird count at risk to invaders from Canada, pesticides

Robins and Purple Finches have joined the multitude of Pinyon Jays filling the yard and at the feeders. Too many Eurasian Collared Doves are displacing the smaller Mourning Doves; the annual Audubon Christmas bird count is underway.

A recent visit to Bosque del Apache found fewer Sandhill Cranes (about 1000), Canada Geese in the hundreds, the Snow Geese count over 35,000, many Mallards and Coots; one Blue Heron shied away from the camera:

Cougar food park here

A letter to President Obama appeared in HuffPost Green:

Pesticides are by design killers of life. They are biocides. Some of them are associated with higher rates of cancer; others poison the nervous system; others act like hormones, disrupting the endocrine system, causing sex and developmental abnormalities. According to David Pimentel, professor of entomology at Cornell University, pesticides affect some 720 million birds per year, killing outright 10 percent or 72 million birds each year. In addition, pesticides are killing our honeybees that pollinate a third of our food.--Evaggelos Vallianatos, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Analysis, Pitzer College writing in the Huffington Post.