Fisher (1951), a British ornithologist, estimated there are more than
100
billion individual wild birds in the world. The Wilson's Storm-petrel,
Oceanites oceanicus, a seabird, is probably the most numerous wild
bird in
the world, and the starling and the house sparrow may by the most
abundant
wild land birds (Fisher, 1951). Obviously, this is an estimate, but an
educated one.
David Taylor
On 11/10/2007, at 8:26 AM, Dave Torr wrote:
Actually I find the estimates on the high side - Short-tailed
shearwaters are one of the more numerous birds (I think Macaroni
Penguin has similar numbers) yet even if all species had that number
of individuals you would end with 230 billion. And since most species
are very restricted in range and numbers I would assume that 100
billion is a more likely figure? Although of course if you count
captive birds the number would increase.
On 11/10/2007, L&L Knight <> wrote:
Yes, there may be hundreds of billions of birds on the planet
compared
to 7 billion people. However, I think there are about 10,000 species
of birds compared to 1 taxa of us. Given the population size of many
particular species, I suspect that the number of humans is probably
equal to the number of individuals in the "bottom" 7,000 bird
species.
That is a scary thought.
I wonder if the estimates of the number of birds includes the
billions
of chooks and budgies etc that we keep in cages. How does the
combined
wild population compare to the combined captive population?
Regards, Laurie.
On Wednesday, October 10, 2007, at 10:38 PM, david taylor wrote:
I'm reading an interesting book at the moment and it prompted a
question.
i wondered just how many birds there are in say Australia or on
planet earth. I'm talking total numbers rather than species. i
googled
and read a couple of interesting pieces on the subject including
some
research from Gaston and Blackburn which suggests there are between
200 and 400 billion birds on earth! Wow! Another study
estimated 100
billion plus birds on earth. In comparison there are around 6.6
billion people on earth, so our avian friends well and truly
outnumber
us.
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