Where did all the vultures go?

We've been in this house for over fifteen years, and every day that it wasn't raining there were at least a couple of dozen vultures circling the valley all day long.

I have noticed that there are no longer any vultures here. I saw one a few days ago, but that is all. Looking on google, I found that India has lost its vultures. In a five year period, the number of vultures there decreased by 99.7 percent.

It's possible that the smoke from the fires is keeping them away, but there have been several clear days in the past weeks, so I wonder if there is some other reason why they are gone.

No idea about vultures.

I am a bit upset about sparrows and other garden birds in England. Growing up, we had a fairly typical-size suburban garden, not tiny, but not all that big. But there was a bit of lawn, a flower bed or two, and a big tree at the foot. And there were birds, quite a lot of them. Nothing exotic, but sparrows and blackbirds and thrushes, maybe the occasional robin or blue tit. Enough that if you woke up early enough, you were greeted by a "dawn chorus" at daybreak, and always plenty around during the day. This was just - normal.

Apparently, since then, and especially since I came to New York, the bird population has been in steep decline. I seem to have grown up with the sparrow population near its peak, and now it's only half that. The other birds aren't doing much better. It makes me sad that children are growing up without birds.

That is sad. The number of small birds here has also diminished greatly. In fact, it seems that all forms of wild life around here has fallen significantly.

_Howard wrote:

all forms of wild life around here has fallen significantly.

Throw a party. Offer free beer.

Vulture populations have collapsed in India and Asia, Africa, and Pakistan.  The problem seems to be worldwide.

A chart on your linked article shows that the population of the species we have here is actually increasing.

Perhaps the lack of food in the valley caused by the retreat of other species has caused the vultures to hunt elsewhere.

That seems plausible.

Are the vultures back?

Yes.

Are they voting Trump?

It feels like we haven't had rain in forever. I've noticed a distinct lack of the usual suspects be they blue birds or hummingbirds or the solitary bees. I don't like it at all. None of it feels right. Not the weather, not the change in fauna, none of it.

Jenni wrote:

It feels like we haven't had rain in forever.

We are 0.04" shy of breaking our all-time rainfall record for October. Since we have three more days to go -- and one of 'em's Halloween -- and it ALWAYS rains on Halloween!! -- we are sure to set a new record.

That's good for the snowpack, good for the reservoirs, good for the trees, good for the salmon.

Send me a bucket, I'll post some to you.

This is very strange. Seattle's record rainfall for October (8.96") is less than ours (9.09").

And Seattle's record rainfall for a single day is 4.29". Ours is 8.83"

In Seattle, the record rainfall in January is 13.67". Here it is 26.62".

WTF?

Don't tell anyone but we don't get as much rain as our reputation.

The difference is, it is drizzling ALL THE TIME.  But the total is less than you might think,  because we don't get gully-washers.

We do get moss.

You need some gully washers to wash all that moss out of your gullies.

We had almost two inches of rain in October. That's a bit more than twice the average for the month. We were getting excited about maybe another year of normal rainfall. But so far, November has not been cooperating. The temps here have been from 85 to 90 all month so far. It's supposed to cool off in five or six days with a slight chance of showers on the 19th and 21st. Not very encouraging.