Either I have missed something from this thread, or I just don't understand. I live in Seattle, in the U-District. I am down at the Montlake Fill all of the time, and insects and swallows seem as thick as ever there. There are literally hundreds of swallows flying around the Fill in the mornings and evenings. I ride my bicycle a lot in and around the city, and I eat so damn many bugs, it makes me wonder where all of you are reporting from. Do you have trees in your neighborhoods? Are you ever near any water? Because if you are, there is no shortage of insect life. Every park in the city is filled with insects and birds. All along the Burke-Gilman is filled with insects and birds. Almost every day I go out to go birding, I still get 40-60 species of birds. In the winter, that spikes upwards because of all of the waterfowl, and at migration, it is still easy to see 80+ species in about an hour-and-a-half at the Montlake Fill. Where are all of you NOT seeing insects and birds?
Or are folks just looking to make problems bigger than they currently are? If this sounds harsh, I apologize. I just do not see the problems you are all talking about.

Brett A. Wolfe
Seattle, WA
m_lincolnii at yahoo.com

Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net> wrote:
Like Diann MacRae, we have lost the Violet-green and Barn Swallows and Vaux's Swifts that we would see just about daily over our house when we first moved in here 15 years ago. I occasionally see all three species, but very infrequently now.

It's worth considering that these species have declined (also) because of loss of nest sites or nest material, subtle but continuous changes that would be very difficult to monitor (just like insect abundance). Violet-greens need crevices - maybe there are fewer all the time. Houses are being replaced by condos, which perhaps are very well sealed against the outside world, as are the houses being built currently. Barn Swallows need mud, as well as ledges, and I've often thought that mud is surely declining in urban areas, as our surroundings are tidied up. I think both of these species have declined all over Seattle since I've lived here. Vaux's Swifts need either snags or chimneys, and the former may well be decreasing, especially of the size needed by the swifts, while fewer and fewer chimneys may present nesting opportunities because of the way they are constructed.


It's fascinating to read the accounts of insect abundance by different contributors, reporting disappearances, declines, abundances, "too many." I would say that insects have not changed in abundance in my yard in 15 years, but there weren't many to begin with. Because of my long time spent in the East, as well as recent visits in summer, I will reiterate that "bugs" back there are 10x as abundant (and at least several times as diverse) in forested habitats as they are in forested habitats in the western Washington lowlands. In any little sunny clearing back there, you could catch or photograph insects for several hours and not begin to exhaust the species present, whereas around here I see the same small number of species again and again. I see in my wooded "natural" yard pretty much the same list of 30 or so insects and spiders that Christine Southwick reported in her Shoreline yard (and thank goodness there are at least that many), but I consider it a woefully
inadequate representation of biodiversity, when you realize there are 91,000 described species of insects in the US. I'm sorry I haven't had the time or foresight to make a continuing collection of all the insect species in my yard, and that would be a great project for an urban entomologist anywhere.


But that's a digression; the same things are happening continentwide and worldwide. Basically, we're making the world worse for birds and other wildlife, except for a select bunch of species that are adapting very well to the conditions we create as we destroy natural habitats and replace them with human habitats. If we understood all the variables, what we see happening is probably quite to be expected. It should be relatively easy right now to predict which North American birds will still be common in 50 or 100 years!
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



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