Millions of nesting birds lost from UK

Experts estimate that breeding birds have vanished from the British countryside at an average rate of one pair every minute. There are now thought to be 166 million nesting birds in the UK compared with 210 million in the 1960s.

The house sparrow is one of the biggest casualties, say researchers. Since 1966, its population has halved from 20 million to 10 million, despite a rise over the last decade.

Dr Mark Eaton, a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds scientist who worked on the State of the UK’s Birds 2012 report, said: “It is shocking to think that we’ve lost one in five of the individual birds that we had in the 1960s, especially when you think that the 44 million birds we have lost since 1966 is equivalent to the current adult human population of England and Wales.”

Changes in land use and the management of the countryside and coastal waters are believed to have contributed to the losses.

In some cases, birds have found it difficult to locate suitable places to nest, or to forage for food in the summer or winter. But for other species, including the house sparrow, the reasons for the decline are still not fully understood.

There were both losers and winners among different species. One of the loser is the wren, still the UK’s most numerous bird, which has declined by an average of 835 individuals a day since 2000.