Here in Shoreline, at my (now reduced) feeders, with and active flowing water feature with multiple different bathing and drinking sites, as well a large, lush landscape filled with well-watered lawns and gardens with 1000+ species of plants, I have noticed no disappearance of chickadees or any other breeding/seasonally or altitudinal migratory passerines. I have so many small bugs (though notably less larger insects), I have actually more breeding and regularly occurring year round birds than ever before, even with a dramatic increase in smaller urban raptors—marlins, Cooper’s,and sharp-shinned hawks.
I have learned to move my feeders and bird houses around to stir things up. All species have memories and can learn quickly and transfer knowledge between generations, so stir it up to keep it more like nature itself. Lots of berries, seed pods, dense evergreens for roosting.
More nuthatches, chickadees, robins, juncos,sparrows, wrens, towhees,kinglets, and brown creepers than ever before.
I guess it’s an oasis, next to an actively maintained graveyard, and the more you stir things up , the more the ecosystem responds.
There has been a dramatic decrease in migratory bird stops, but Shoreline is cutting down trees as fast as it can for new dense pack development, with lots more lights and noise and high rise buildings..
Ravens are now nesting two doors up, so that is suppressing the crows which predate the smaller birds. Crows mess with raptors but not with ravens. And I actively terminate/trap/discourage all non-native mammals as well as those allowed as nuisance species.
Coyotes are now helping out with the outdoors cats.
Also It has been an extremely dry fall, so birds are moving around.
My biggest landscape client, the historic Boeing mansion, has also an overall increase in most year-round, seasonal breeding, and winter birds (crossbills now). This neighborhood is an obvious oasis.
If I were to name a decreasing bird group for me this year in my patch, it would be the Piciformes, and I would attribute that to raptors
