People are massively killing wintering birds with glue instead of helping and protecting them.

People send letters from different regions of the country, saying that a widespread phenomenon has appeared — instead of feeding wintering birds, people pour out glue for them, sprinkle a little treat on top, and in this way the birds fall into a horrifying trap. Hungry birds fly to the feeder and stick fast, after which they start jerking in panic, tearing out their feathers and injuring themselves. In the end the birds simply die: in horror, fear, hunger and cold.

This is what our so-called “elder brother”, the human, looks like.

I used to know only about isolated cases of such madness, but now people say it has truly become widespread. And when my readers approached, for example, fruit sellers at the market and asked: “What are you doing? What have the little titmice ever done to you?”, they replied: “We want to and we kill them, that’s our business! Flies are stuck to traps, how are birds any better? They’re the same parasites.”

In general, the situation with birds is truly critical. They are now under the strongest pressure from humans on all sides — their habitat has been destroyed, there is no food base. Every year there are more and more forest fires and large-scale clear-cutting! And there are other tragic causes of mass death — for example, in Russia alone tens of millions of birds die on power lines every year. Ornithologists speak of figures from 7 to 20 million individuals!

At the same time, for example, in the south of Russia, fields have for years been littered with dead birds from pesticides. Let me remind you that only in autumn 2022 – winter 2023 a mass die-off of birds was recorded, including Red Data Book species, with the fields literally “strewn with them”. And this happened in 16 regions of the country at once! Birds died from rodenticides (poisons for rodents) together with all wild animals; in these same fields there were thousands of hares, foxes and so on. And of course there is the many-year “zombie roe deer invasion”, when it has only recently become clear that roe deer are also dying out because of poisons in the fields.

But the most crucial factor in the sharp decline in bird numbers is precisely the reduction of the food base and the loss of habitats.

Firstly, forest fires destroy the environment and food resources for a very long time. After major fires, berry shrubs and all kinds of grain and fruit plants die off for decades. Thus, researchers at Irkutsk University note that after the 2019 fires in northern Baikal, berry shrubs were almost completely destroyed in the burned areas, and mature cedar and pine forests, which provide shelter for the maximum number of species, were severely affected.

Secondly, logging and economic development sharply reduce the food base and nesting sites. Scientists have calculated that the number of insectivorous birds in many regions is declining precisely because of logging, climate change and development: after felling and clearing forest plots in the taiga or protected areas, thousands of species of insects, berries and seeds disappear.

Thirdly, large-scale development (cities, roads, infrastructure) breaks the last patches of wild nature into fragments. In cities, the smooth, closely mown lawns that seem beautiful to us turn out to be useless for birds: they leave not a single grain of cereal plants that sparrows and other small species used to feed on. In winter, streets and parks become covered with de-icing agents — this leads to poisoning: sparrows often mistake the anti-icing “stones” for gravel, and then the chemicals have a catastrophic effect on the birds’ digestion. On top of this, add changing climatic processes that shift the timing of insect emergence and plant fruiting: disruptions of migration and feeding lead to birds arriving too late and being unable to raise their chicks. Analysis of populations of different species has shown a statistical link: the stronger the shift in migration timing under the influence of warming, the steeper the decline in bird numbers.

In my materials I often speak about the problem of “forest drying” — when people destroy the continuity of forest cover, cut the forest with roads and infrastructure, deliberately clear old forest massifs, the biotic regulation of the local climate is disrupted. After that come forest fires, the phenomenon of “false autumn”, crop failures in the wild and inevitable hunger among animals.

Do we even need to say now that birds are the most important sanitary workers and regulators of ecosystems? In model calculations scientists have repeatedly shown how rapidly natural biogeocenoses degrade without birds — it is birds that exert a key influence on all terrestrial processes. They heal trees, disperse seeds and carry genetic material! Birds participate in plant pollination, regulate insect numbers and maintain the food base for all inhabitants of the wild.

Meanwhile, more hungry little birds, awaiting the frosts and trying to eat the treat scattered for them, silently freeze, stuck fast to a piece of cardboard.

Allies!

There must be a counterweight to all this — and this counterweight is us. I remind you that every year, by our own efforts, we launch the All-Russian project to save wintering birds! From all regions of Russia tens of thousands of people, adults and children, join us, making special SAFE feeder balls for wild animals and then placing them in the forest.

Join our work. Previously we carried out long-distance expeditions, a workshop operated daily (throughout the winter), and together with the team we went to places of ecological degradation — after forest fires and large-scale logging — to provide substantial support to the Russian Taiga. Now, unfortunately, our expeditions are temporarily suspended due to a lack of resources for the struggle. But the project itself has been launched, and we must do everything we can to involve as many people as possible in saving wintering birds!

Once we restore our strength, we will restore the expeditions! In the meantime, let us unite and do everything possible to support our feathered brothers.

© PAVEL PASHKOV