“With this great emptying of the skies, there are now 3 billion fewer beaks to snap up insects, and 3 billion fewer pairs of wings for moving nutrients, pollen, and seeds through the world. We haven’t just lost birds, but all the things that birds do.” Ed Yong in The Atlantic: The Quiet Disappearance of Birds in North America. “The continent’s bird populations have fallen by 29 percent since 1970.”