Poecile said:
So you think suburban gardens with bird table and nestboxes, or farmland and hedgerows and little copses, are 'natural' then, do you? .
Erm, no - I didn't say that. My point was that people were saying that letting a magpie take a blackbird in your garden is 'nature' - I was pointing out that the current level of magpies is not necessarily 'natural', and *may* be becasue they have adapted well to the changes man has made to the environment. I was thinking here particularly about the availablility of carrion from road kill, and the general wastefulness which leaves edible foodstuffs around. Of course man's counter measure to this (shooting the poor little buggers) may have tipped the balance the other way, so maybe my supposition was wrong.
I also pointed out that the bb's living in an urban environment, & chosing to nest in leylandii is unnatural - these trees are notoriously rubbish for providing protection to nesting birds. Many of the denser-foliaged native trees & shrubs they may otherwise have chosen have been removed by man.
You point out that blackbird numbers are higher in this unnatural environment than the pre-human one. Fair enough, but I hadn't actually said otherwise (although I did assume it |;| - I hadn't realised that dense woodland is less suitable for bb's than partly wooded 'marginal' areas.)
I don't think my actions are 'natural', and have never claimed they are - but that doesn't make them bad in my book, or no more so than the RSPB 'controlling' gulls or foxes to favour other species.
Poecile said:
not many martens, polecats, weasels, snakes, stoats, mink, mice, jays, woodpeckers etc in your neck of the woods, I imagine .
Actually, you'd be surprised. I've had mink in the garden (only once to my knowledge - it robbed a wood pigeon nest), mice (yep - there's at least one woodmouse nest, and I feed them through the winter, so hopefully they're a permanent fixture), jays (not too frequent - they only seem to show up in the nesting season to rob nests), woodpeckers (we get GS Woody, & greens are in the nearby woods, but don't come to the garden). No stoats in the garden, sadly, but there are definitely some within a few miles.
Poecile said:
In short, blackbird and robin numbers are also massively inflated and at a completely unnatural level. Whatever 'natural' is.
OK - I accept that, but are you saying that it's therefore wrong to try to bolster their numbers still further by providing them with unnatural food sources, nest boxes & trying to limit predation?
Adrian