What Do Goldfinches, Railways And Biodiversity Have In Common?

for the love of birds… and other wonders!

I’ve always been fascinated with birds. When I was younger, I used to wake up early in the morning during school holidays to watch birds and make lists of the species I’d seen. I owned lots of books on birds. And I was even able to discern between different species merely by hearing their song. Even though I have lived in the city ever since, the colourful images of beautiful birds from my books have stayed with me. I have forgotten about some of the names and much of the melodies of the different bird species. Even so, my heart still beats with joy each time I see a bird crossing my path.
Just recently, this has been the case with the goldfinch.

The Goldfinch

This extraordinarily colourful species (at least for European standards) has long been a popular character in paintings, books and poems. It inhabits open, partially wooded lowlands with fallows and hedges. A habitat that’s become increasingly rare in our intensively cultivated and urbanized areas. But when there’s enough food in offer, it can even inhabit urban areas, wild parks and gardens. On the goldfinch’s menu are mainly plant seeds. And this will precisely be the most common picture of a goldfinch: sitting on a thistle or teasel twig and picking out the tiny little seeds. The young birds are also fed with insects.

The Goldfinch is native to Europe, North Africa and Western and Central Asia. It still has a relatively large and stable population worldwide. Hence, it is not on the Red list of endangered species.

Unprecedented threats

But, according to the NABU (Nature Conservation Union of Germany), its number has been cut in half in Germany in the last 25 years. This is not a big surprise, seeing that those wild, untidy habitats offering an abundance of the goldfinch’s preferred food, are disappearing from our landscape. And this is happening for many different reasons: the expansion of urban areas, of streets and of agricultural land.

The same is true for many bird species, and even more for those feeding on insects mainly, as there’s been a huge decline in insect populations worldwide. According to a large study undertaken in Germany between 1989 and 2015, popularly known as the “Krefelder study”, the number of insects has declined for more than 75 percent over 27 years in protected (!) areas in Germany. Other studies across Europe show similar figures. And such a decline in insect biomass is naturally accompanied by a decline in bird abundance.

Some startling observations

Now back to the Goldfinch. I’ve seen this extravagant species three times in my lifetime.

The first time was during this golden age called childhood, where I was exploring the woods on one occasion along with my younger brother. This has been in Germany at a rather wild and natural site on a church property. I used to go to this place at least once a year throughout my childhood. I never used any precise, scientific methods in my bird watching. But in my childish notations over a span of some ten years, I could distinctly see a general decline in the number of birds.

In a similar, quite unscientific manner, I could observe that, when my family would drive from Croatia to Germany in the years of 2000 and on, the license plate and the windshield would be all black from the insects stuck to it. When I looked at our car after that same trip from Croatia to Germany in around 2016/2018, I was shocked to see it almost clear of any insects!

In ecological terms, 10-15 years is a very short time, because natural ecosystems usually take a long time to adapt to changes of any kind. So, it is even more alarming to see such a rapid decline of bird and insect populations in the lifespan of just a 21-year-old.

Surprised by a beauty!

My second encounter with the goldfinch almost made me late for school one day. It was in my hometown Zagreb, Croatia. I was cycling on my usual path to school, leading me by the side of the railways. Then suddenly, I spotted a goldfinch sitting on a teasel twig right by my path! I immediately had to stop and admire this beauty, until it flew away… What it left behind was this huge teasel plant right by tracks. Why on Earth was there a teasel growing there? I don’t know. But this goldfinch probably inhabited this place for the sole reason of these plants growing there, since its seeds are such an important source of food for this bird. In no other place in Croatia had I seen this bird before or after this treasured encounter.

And the biodiversity part…

During the time of my moving to Germany in 2017, there was a huge discussion going on in the German public. It was about the potential banning of the pesticide glyphosate from the EU. Glyphosate, also known under its commercial name “Round-up”, is the main compound of a “total” herbicide used to kill a broad range of weeds. It was largely talked and written about in the past years in press and politics alike. Many studies were conducted and cited on its potential risks and toxicity, oftentimes coming to contradicting conclusions. When evidence on glyphosate’s potential harmfulness to bees was found, farmers were quickly assaulted as “bee-killers” and “poison-sprayers”.

While I do not want to go into the details of its relevance in farming practices, its potential risks and the way these should be handled, I would like to point out a peculiar case of glyphosate-banning-politics in Germany.

The controversial public debate over the use of glyphosate became increasingly emotional in November 2017. A vote on the relicencing of glyphosate in the EU was going on. And it was the German minister of agriculture of that time who voted in favour of glyphosate, despite the divided opinion of our politicians.

Losers and winners

As a result, some German cities proposed the local ban of glyphosate in their cities. This involved its ban on the agricultural land leased to the farmers by the city, as well. The obvious problem with this is, that farmers leasing town-owned land, and who are prohibited the use of glyphosate, have a disadvantage over their colleagues who are not (yet) affected by a ban. This was the case in the town I’m living in, too.

When the controversy in the city council was finally concluded in favour of a local glyphosate ban, a sudden outcry over this decision came up. It did not come from the farmers affected, but surprisingly, from the tram and train operating companies. These both use glyphosate to keep the space in and around the tracks weed-free. According to tram companies, as well as the German Railways (Deutsche Bahn), there is currently no alternative to glyphosate for weed-killing in the track areas. Both companies claim to be dependent on glyphosate for track maintenance. As a result, the total ban of glyphosate in areas owned and leased by my city was temporarily suspended.

Tidiness at what price?

Whether or not it’s precisely glyphosate which is responsible for the biodiversity crisis, plant and insect populations, and thus food abundance for birds, are undoubtedly taking a rapid decline.

But we humans love to look at the tidiness of our neighbour’s or our own’s garden. We admire the impeccable English-styled parks in our cities with its all clean and weed-free lawns. We frown over “chaotic”, “wild” and unmown spots we encounter.

When I saw the goldfinch by the railways that day in Zagreb, I was reminded of a mislead, but very funny search for a slogan that the Croatian railway company (HŽ) undertook in 2014. Asking students in Croatia to make up a new slogan for the company, they had accidentally landed an embarrassing faux-pas… Everybody started to make fun of the disorganized, old-fashioned, and unpunctual Croatian trains. Slogans such as: “Never comes, never goes”, “Slowing down since 1860.”, “You’re just to slow to be true, I wish I could get off of you”, “Discover Croatia as it once was” or “Fashionably late!” were invading twitter under the hashtag #Hžslogan and making the whole country laugh at its railways for a couple of days.

But one hashtag especially stuck with me: “Travel with HŽ and admire the weeds by the tracks!”.

Could the wilderness by the railroads of Croatia actually be a hidden advantage? An ecological benefit of “weeds” we usually oversee? At least for the goldfinch this could be the case.

An unexpected encounter

The third time I’ve seen goldfinches in nature was just before I was about to do research for this article. I was cycling out of my town on a narrow cycling path leading me between a wild, marshy pasture by the river and a hedge with thistles. The pastures along the river were a protected area, in fact. To my enthusiasm, there were many goldfinches flying to and fro between the hedges and trees by the path! It was a truly magical moment to see these beautiful creatures in a moment so unexpected on that calm Sunday morning. This last encounter gives me hope. Hope that there still are species finding a place to live among us humans – if we give them the space for it.

You might be wondering all along why bother so much about this simple bird. But there is much more to it than just preserving some colourful species. Without the birds, without the many kinds of plants and insects, we lose something irreplaceable. These seemingly useless creatures give stability to our ecosystems and carry out important roles like pollinating plants for our food (just to name a few).

It’s like we’ve learned at school in biology once: one creature nourishes and depends on or complements the other, until finally, we discover that there’s a tight web connecting each and every living creature on Earth with one another. With just one group of living beings missing, our global ecosystem could eventually collapse – the figures truly are alarming. It is not too late yet, but there’s a need to speak up about it and to act.

The first step may just be admiring the weeds by the side of the tracks…

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Sources:

https://www.ostsee-zeitung.de/Mecklenburg/Rostock/Trotz-Glyphosat-Verbots-RSAG-setzt-umstrittenes-Unkrautgift-ein https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_goldfinch
http://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/european-goldfinch-carduelis-carduelis
https://www.nabu.de
https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/nachhaltigkeit/umweltvorreiter/aktuelle_umweltthemen/naturschutzgerechte_pflege_am_gleis-1183742