Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Scientists Are Tracking Worrying Declines in Insects—and the Birds That Feast on Them

In fact, 90 percent of the more than 10,700 known bird species rely on insects for food during at least part of their life cycle. Even the most dedicated seed-eating songbirds must eat insects and other arthropods, that many-legged group of creatures that includes spiders and millipedes, to produce eggs, to grow new feathers and to feed their young. Without insects, in other words, they wouldn’t survive. 

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People may not be motivated to save the insects for their own sake, but a world without insects is a world without birds. It’s a world where no college student will hear the fluty song of a white-throated sparrow across a mountain lake and have her life changed. It’s a world where nature offers no song to the rising sun. It’s a silent spring. 

In the long term, it would become something even worse. “Without insects, everything dies: all mammals, all reptiles, all birds and even humans,” Ware says. “If you want to conserve any of those other things, including us, you should want to conserve insects.”

- More Here

Personally, I learned about this couple of years ago and the change I made was to turn off the patio lights. Living in the woods, I used to leave the lights on all night but I learned that killed so many insects. 

Obviously, I never use any pesticides nor do I classify some random plants as "weeds" and destroy them.  


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