#LookInTheMirror Who's zooming who? Petition to reduce the use of bird deterrents on buildings
We have just #100Days until #COP26Glasgow and about 9 years to get our beautiful planet back on track. #Climate
Take a minute to look at this beautiful bird looking at it's reflection (Image:©Debbie Geraghty).
Think a minute. Just who is zooming who? Is the gull trying to tell us something? What do we see when we look in our own species's mirror? Why are gulls either loved or hated by others? Stop and think what we value.
Good news! The petition to reduce the use of cruel bird deterrents on buildings received lots of press last week in Wales and on the BBC News website. Thanks to lovely people like you it's now almost at almost 38,000 signatures. It's even going to be on a local TV channel. More importantly, my Geraint Davies MP has agreed to a zoom meeting to discuss the petition as it gains popularity. Together we are making waves...
I started the ChangeOrg petition to reduce the use of cruel bird deterrents on buildings after seeing a dead Herring Gull seemingly killed by bird deterrent spikes on a rooftop.
Please sign and share the petition with your friends and on social media. The petition link is below. Please read to the bottom if you can find a few more minutes.
#Nature #birds #NoToBirdSpikes #NoToBirdNetting #NoToBirdDeterrents #LetTheBirdsFly #EverySmallAction #100Days #COP26 #LookInTheMirror
Stop the lingering death or injury of birds on our from bird deterrent netting and spikes on roofs. What positive actions to urgently stop the effects of climate change can you take? Signing petitions like this can help.
Yes, our reduction of fossil fuel use is vitally important as is investing in better alternatives. So too is biodiversity, as its interrelated with climate change.
So take a minute to #LookInYourMirror Think what you can do for #Climate and #Biodiversity. It's up to everyone of us.
#EverySmallAction in our cities, towns and communities to save wildlife can make a difference too. Our actions together add up and spread messages across the world. The whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts!
Let's welcome birds on our rooftops!
Please sign & share the petition now with friends & on social media if you can.
#nature #birds #biodiversity #NoToBirdSpikes #NoToBirdNetting #NoToBirdDeterrents #LetTheBirdsFly #EverySmallAction #100Days #COP26 #LookInTheMirror
Gulls aren't gullible but maybe I was?
The recent press coverage about the petition focussed on my seeing a dead Herring Gull seemingly spiked on a rooftop by bird deterrents & why I was inspired to act.
I grew up and still live near the coast and it still seems to me gulls are common. It's true, numbers of Herring Gulls nesting on rooftops increased markedly into the 2000's. Shockingly, though, the outlook for the actual population is bleak.
The UK holds over 70 per cent of the Herring Gull numbers and they have declined very dramatically by 50 per cent since 1970. Because they are vulnerable, the herring gull is on the red list of birds of conservation concern & the lesser black-backed gull is on the amber list.
They are not the only birds declining in the UK. I remember myriad species of birds perching on our house roof where I grew up in Cornwall. There were starlings, robins, gulls, crows, house sparrows, blue tits, pigeons, thrushes, goldcrests, doves, swallows, wagtails, yellow hammers, house martins & even visiting redstarts. A pair of barn owls screeched from trees outside my bedroom window & nested in a derelict tumble down cottage nearby. Eerie sounding curlews, redshanks, lapwing, bar-tailed godwits, oyster catchers, swans & shelduck flew in the estuary below often pursued by newly feral mink escaped from a farm up the valley. I always thought things would stay the same.
Now, admittedly a good few years later; very many of those same species have had their populations reduced dramatically, their habitat destroyed & their food supply altered by climate change.
Numbers of many birds including some gulls are sinking like the Titanic. For gulls; their food sources of fish are rapidly being depleted with the international demand for seafood, destructive bottom trawling, pollution incidents & now potentially shifts in the distribution of some of their food due to local weather patterns moving about because of climate change. The thing is we do have enough time if we organise & do many actions at once.
Last week I was struck by the mixed reaction to gulls by those who added comments to the press coverage. There's definitely a bit of a marmite; love them or don't care at all for them reaction. Many of the general public really care for birds in general and this for them includes common birds like gulls, crows & pigeons. Some people point to bird mess, the aggression of gulls during breeding season, stealing of ice creams, bullying birds on bird tables, the noise birds make and that in their minds there are way too many of them.
People either get fired up or overwhelmed by seeing or experiencing the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. Call me a dreamer but I'm reminded that all this diverse nature is part of a bigger jigsaw worldwide. Each species or puzzle piece contributes to the whole; often in ways we haven't begun to understand and it is this that makes this crazy planet we live on thrive and be wonderous.
We are rapidly finding out and being reminded by Covid that our lives on this beautiful planet are not immortal. Everything is indeed interconnected.
So take a minute to #LookInTheMirror Think what you can do for #Climate and #Biodiversity. It's up to everyone of us.
#Climate #Biodiversity #LetTheBirdsFly #NoToBirdSpikes #NoToBirdNetting #100Days to #COP26 #LookInTheMirror
Help by doing something local and simple to stop the depletion of wildlife in our own backyards and on our rooftops. Stop the cruelty caused by some of these bird deterrent methods.
Let's leave a functioning planet behind for our children. And let's include the squawking gulls of our rooftops!
3 suggestions you can also do to help
Join the Facebook group: Rooftop Bird Club
If you have photographic evidence of injury or death to birds caused by bird deterrents like netting and spikes please consider sharing photos with the petition link on social media or in the RooftopBirdClub with your reaction and the relevant hashtags. If you are on Twitter do DM me at @joboxer12.
If you have constructive ideas, useful research or helpful contacts please kindly let me know at @joboxer12 or at the Rooftop Bird Club. Thank you.