> 
> 
> Over 44 years since I came here - same habitats, same city, just a whole
> lot more city and a whole lot less habitats - whether native or
> agricultural.

Jerry, these sorts of changes are interesting, and perhaps not always
detrimental.  Where I grew up in Sydney on what for the suburbs was a huge
area of one acre there were no native birds whatsoever. Five introduced
ones.  This was on the edge of the built up area, I could walk to a dairy
for the milk whilst in primary school.  I kept a Bug House, but there were
very few decent sized caterpillars to find. Privet hedge moth, introduced,
and spitfires, native, but growing on one of the rare trees in the street.
The tree was introduced; this particular species of caterpillar was able to
swap. A biological desert.

Since then there have been vast swathes of street plantings done in the area
and everyone has a garden, such that it is now what we would call open
woodland, with an attendant vast increase in birdlife.  This is similar in
rural towns around the country.  My daughter lives in town.  She has more
bird species than I do living in bushland.  More habitat range close by?

In the last forty years there has also been a major shift in some of the
land use.  From dairying being the main rural occupation to much of it
turned over to horticulture, mainly but not exclusively macadamia nuts.  A
grass monoculture turned over to a single tree monoculture.  Strangely this
country has been used for spring build up for 100 years, and does not seem
to have changed in that time for bees.  Except for the possibility of
insecticide spray kills.

So I was wondering if some of the decline in insects mentioned in the first
post was due to bird predation.  Rather than lack of insects causing a
future bird decline.

And of course it is thankfully no longer acceptable for children to spend
their weekend killing birds with shanghais or BB guns, at least in this
country.

Geoff Manning

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