where do birds go to die ? there are heaps of our feathered friends in the sky but where do they finish up ?

Question

i don't want 'wags' telling me they've gone out to sea , and i know there is an element of 'road-kill' .
this has always intrigued me --- any genuine thoughts out there ??

Answer 1

You probably mean the migratory birds. There are a few theories
1. Thousands die from hitting windows.
2. Attrition. The migration patterns and routes is long and arduous.Only the strong survive. Many perish along the way.
3.Poison from farmlands where they stop to eat some grains or insects. So far this causes the largest kill. 672 million per year.The offending pesticides are organophosphates and carbanate, many of which are legal pesticides.

Answer 2

A good number of birds wind up inside a predator. That is the fate of a prey species and most birds are just that. Many also die of starvation (during the weaning stages of their lives). Remember for a population to remain stable, the parents only have to replace themselves over time. So if you have a species where the average age of an adult is five year, e.g., then even if the parents rear 10 chicks a year (*50 birds) then at the end of five years, there need be only 2 of that 50 that have made it to replace the parents and keep the population at the same level.

Most birds leaving the nest have to learn to avoid predators, avian, mammalian, and reptilian. They have to learn to find food - often not an easy task. They may have to cope with migration dangers, etc.

Also most birds are fairly small (over all) and if they die of disease or starvation, they usually come to rest in somewhat inconspicuous places, where they are mostly disposed of by scavengers (including insect ones) or decay.

If you actually begin to look around, you will sometimes see a fair amount of dead birds, depending on your locations. For example: my background training was in field biology and my hobby is pigeons, so I tend to notice "bird things". Just within the past week, I've seen a dead hummingbird (flew into a shop window and was dead in a parking lot); a smashed Burrowing Owl (apparently flew into a car); a partially eaten Western Bluebird (looks to have been taken by a Cooper's Hawk in a park.

Answer 3

I feed the garden birds all year round. We have a bird table and a couple of feeders at the bottom of our garden, which I stock with seeds, fat balls, nuts and any old bread etc. Last winter we were really bad here with all the snow, but I cleared a path from the house to the bird table. My neighbour has a garden pond and the birds were able to get a drink there.

Answer 4

I would imagine that, besides predators, many simply drop to the ground from wherever they die - in flight, or from a perch - and are eaten by scavengers, or decompose.

Answer 5

this is a very interesting though...hmmm...i am thinking that the birds just go somewhere into their natural habitats to die, and since us idiot humans dont ever go into nature, we dont see any dead birds. i mean, have you ever seen a dead deer that was naturally killed? have you ever seen a dead squirrell (without the element of roadkill)? think about it, we are just out of tune with nature

Answer 6

They die where they last were like in parks, yards, streets, many places. Have a nice holiday.

Answer 7

Dead birds make fat cats, dogs, foxes, racoons, bugs, other birds (ie hawks), and Vice Presidents (Cheney was dove hunting when he shot his friend).

Answer 8

out to sea

Answer 9

Einstein was a genius

Answer 10

They end up on the ground.