are birds good for the environment

Birds live just about everywhere. Whether you are in a city, in the woods, at a lake or river, or out in farm country, you will find birds. Heres a list of various ways in which birds benefit ecosystems and enhance our lives.

Birds are environmentally friendly exterminators.

What birds eat is often just as ecologically important as where they poop. For example, many birds are voracious predators of pests. Barn Swallows can consume as many as 60 insects an hour. Over an agricultural field, swallows rescue pest-prone crops and leave more food for us. And installing Barn Owl boxes on farms reduces populations of destructive rodents, like gophers. Similarly, putting up nest boxes for Western Bluebirds can save grapes on vineyards. In this way, promoting and protecting bird habitat is a great alternative to widely used, harmful pesticides.

Their poop is important fertilizer.

Guano, or bird droppings, is essential for dispersing nutrients; seabirds are especially important in this regard. Following months at sea, consuming fish and other marine life, they come ashore to breed in vast colonies numbering in the hundreds or thousands. Seabirds concentrate massive amounts of nutrients at their coastal breeding grounds when they poop and bring their full stomachs ashore.

For example, every summer, a large number of Dovekies land in northwest Greenland to breed. They transfer an estimated 3,500 tons of nitrogen, a crucial plant nutrient, from the ocean to the soil in the process. All that nitrogen feeds grazers like hares, geese, reindeer, and muskox, which humans hunt for food, and increases the growth of local grass in the otherwise arid Arctic environment. Where there are Dovekies, muskox numbers are 10 times higher.

At one point in human history, big deposits of bird guano were so valuable as fertilizer for crops that Spain started a war over them. The advent of synthetic fertilizers means bird poop is no longer fought over, but as in Greenland guano deposits still support many ecosystems and people.

Avian construction crews create habitat.

For birders, woodpeckers are doubly good news: a fine sight on their own, and home-builders for other cavity-nesting species. Research has shown that cavity-nestersbirds that build their homes inside tree hollows or other holesdo best when woodpeckers abound. In one recent Texas study, birds like titmice, flycatchers, and wrens were more likely to survive long-term if they built their nests in abandoned woodpecker cavities instead of those created by decay. Woodpecker-excavated holes afforded more access to tasty insects and offered better protection from predators.

Woodpeckers are so important for other species that monitoring them can tell scientists how the entire bird community is doing. They are environmental indicators: If woodpeckers are around, you can bet lots of other birds are, too.

FAQ

What would happen if birds went extinct?

Losing birds with unique features could have cascading impacts on ecosystem health. A reduced variety of bird types will most likely lead to a reduction in the variety of insects consumed, flowers pollinated, seeds dispersed and so on.

Do we really need birds?

Birds play an essential role in the functioning of the world’s ecosystems, in a way that directly impacts human health, economy and food production – as well as millions of other species.

How do birds clean up the environment?

Birds are environmentally friendly exterminators. For example, many birds are voracious predators of pests. Barn Swallows can consume as many as 60 insects an hour. Over an agricultural field, swallows rescue pest-prone crops and leave more food for us.

Are birds good for your yard?

Birds help reduce many flying, crawling, and nuisance insect pests in our backyards. They are especially helpful in the spring and early summer when migratory birds are either stopping through or arriving for nesting season and need to re-up energy stores.