Where Have The Thrushes Gone

[cecil39]

Has anyone seen them this year? we usually see or hear them tapping away on some large stones at the bottom of the garden, but not this year and have not found any empty snail shells either.

[gness]

The loss of feeding and nesting habitats, Cecil......they are now a red listed bird.

Intensive arable farming is partly to blame.......they will make fewer nesting attempts on this type of land and fewer fledglings will survive...

We need better hedgerow management and new woodlands to see a comeback of this bird....x

[Chipchopper]

I don't see so many song thrushes around, these days but when I do I feel privileged.
I too have a large pebble, strategically placed under the hedge for them to use as an anvil but again little evidence of them using it of late.
While some people scatter slug pellets like confetti, its little wonder that our beloved thrushes and hedgehogs have become rear and threatened.

[Canary42]

They've been massacred by the fivefold increase in the cat population over the last fifty years.

[cecil39]

I think that here abouts it must be cats then, as the habitat has not changed around here much, but several new folks and their cats have moved in around the village, none of our friends admit to using slug pellets, such a shame.

[paddywak]

We've had several,or maybe the same one,visit but they've never hung about.As canary says too many cats in the area we've never had any trouble with them untill we lost Max.

[novalis]

I have been lucky enough to have seen both song and mistle thrushes on a regular basis this year ( outskirts of Oldham ) but I live very close to a large playing field and a streamside walk and there are no cats to speak of. Last Thursday I saw a kingfisher for only the second time this year. They always take my breath away.

[paddywak]

novalis,the last pit I worked at we had a pumphouse by the river about half a mile from the pit where a family of Kingfishers nested,It was suprising the number of people who seemed to find jobs to do down there,most of which seemed to involve cameras.

[Tilly2]

We see kingfishers on a daily basis, on our river and its backwater. Well, we hear them first and then we see them. Lovely little birds. I feel very privileged.

[ruthann58]

we have them here , have always fed the birds and are lucky to have a wide varitey that visit us apart from sparrows which we hardly see at all , and at 1 stage we had 12 cats as well