An editorial in today's Times, under the headline, "Toxic Threats to Grassland Birds," blames insecticides for a decline in "various sparrows, eastern and western meadowlarks, bobolinks, horned larks and at least two kinds of owl."
The Times' evidence, as often, is "a new study," though, as often, the newspaper doesn't provide a hyperlink to the study, doesn't say where it was published, and doesn't provide any information about its methodology or its funding. It doesn't even name the authors, though it does describe them as Canadian. The editorial says:
a new generation of nerve-agent insecticides called neonicotinoids could pose a further threat.
These insecticides are now under review by the Environmental Protection Agency. They have caused huge die-offs of honeybees in Europe and provoked an uproar among scientists, not least because the studies that purported to establish their safety were financed by pesticide manufacturers. We hope that the Canadian study, establishing a clear link between pesticides and grassland bird losses, will cause the E.P.A. to consider the next generation of insecticides in a more critical light.
Maybe I'm just a skeptic or a contrarian, but I'm not convinced. Maybe the bird population is diminishing not because of any toxic effect of the insecticides on the birds, but because the insecticides are actually working as intended to reduce the insect population, and as a result there are fewer bugs around for the birds to eat. How is it that these pesticides have such terrible effects on European honeybees but not on American honeybees?
Anyway, why not link to the study, so readers can have a look and judge for themselves. The New York Times, with its editorial staff of more than 1,000, can't be bothered to include it, but Smartertimes, with its significantly smaller editorial staff, was able to find it and is providing it to readers: The link is here.