"Let's not forget we are also losing the birds that feed on insects - whose birdsong used to delight us in spring."

Can you provide data to support this claim of loss of birds?  Around my house we have never had more Hummingbirds, Orioles, or Chimney Swifts than we had this year by actual count.  The count of Rose Breasted Gros Beaks was higher for a few years about ten years ago than this last year but growing back from that disasterous spring migration kill several years ago.

Again this fall I looked at native pollinators on Golden Rod 150 feet outside the bear fence around my hives.  The natives outnumber the honey bees every time I looked.  From sometime in the late 1800s up to about 2010 no local bee keeper needed a bear fence.  We have a breeding population of bears back again.

I probably kill a toad or two every single time I mow my yard.  I wish I did not get them but do not know how to avoid chopping the occasional toad to bits.  I can hear thousands of frogs singing any evening around my yard.

Now, if you live in the suburbs perhaps you do not have this diversity of wildlife in your backyard.  But, out in the country we have lots of critters of all kinds.  Fortunately, we are developing a very healthy population of coyotes locally.  They have killed enough deer that our woods understory is even recovering.  And, they are well on their way to killing enough raccoons we just might get some ground nesting birds back.  Current raccoon population is roughly 10% of what it was 20 years ago.

Dick  
" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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