Between October and January of every year , millions of birds from central and northern Europe make their agency south to the Mediterranean to drop their wintertime months in warm condition . But for hundreds of 1000 of birds , it could be their final resting place .
That ’s because high - intensive automated harvest home machinery mean to strip down tree of their olives during the night are unintentionally sucking up songbirds with them , fit in to an editorial piece written inNature . Olives are reap at Nox to serve preserve their “ aromatic compounds ” , but roosting skirt blinded by shining brightness and stunned by machinery become inadvertent victims in the process .
The Andalusian authorities in Spain has already put a stoppage to the process after it was found that 2.6 million bird were vacuum every year , but other parts of Spain and other country , including Portugal , still practice automated olive harvest – something conservation mathematical group are hoping to land consciousness to . It ’s expected that around 96,000 birds die in Portugal every year due to nighttime olive harvesting .
According to Portuguese newspaperExpresso , at last count , almost 500 Bronx cheer were down in December and January after the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests ( ICNF ) inspected 25 loads of olive glean and found “ an average of 6.4 dead birds per hectare . ” In the 15,000 hectares ( 37,000 acres ) of existing olive groves , it is approximate that almost 100,000 hoot may be vote out every class . Officials note that the number " are not statistically relevant to set already the inhibition of the nocturnal picking , ” reports the publication , impart that " it is necessary to tone up the sampling in the next harvest time season , between October and January " and only then " more drastic measuring rod can be taken . "
However , the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds ( SPEA ) is calling for a closure to nighttime harvest home .
" The Birds Directive order that they should not be open to flutter in the quietus full point , " said SPEA ornithologist Domingos Leitão . " If the birds of one dustup of birds are frightened they aviate to another . "
" When negative impact like these are detected , the authorities must act swiftly and consequently . We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dead birds , " said Nuno Sequeira , head of Portuguese environmental organization Quercus . “ The lack of regulation allows birds to break down and other environmental impacts , such as soil eating away and contamination and pollution of aquifers with synthetic chemicals used in intensive and super intensive farming . ”
A reportconductedby the Council of Andalusia , which search at intensive olive - harvest home practice , found that nesting birds are especially vulnerable to environmental variable because they are asleep and unaware of what is happening . Furthermore , spotlights used during harvest blinds the dame .
More than a dozen coinage of birdie were observed in the olive assembling baskets , including black - head warbler and robins . Banding of birds bespeak that most fall from France , Holland , Belgium , Germany , and Scandinavia as well as the United Kingdom and Baltic countries .
[ H / T : ExpressoandBird Guides ]
