There arenât as many birds as there were when I was a boy. Not in North America. Iâve read that birds have declined in North America by nearly a third, 30 percent, since I was young. I recognized that there were changes when I was young, before I read any reports. I stopped seeing chimney swifts and nighthawks when I was young. They were two of the most common summer birds when I was a boy. But then, suddenly it seems, they were gone. Whip-poor-wills werenât as numerous as cuckoos but I saw them regularly. Not any more. There are many other birds that arenât as numerous as they used to be, that I donât see as often as I used to. Brown thrasher, catbird, wood thrush, veery and whip-poor-will are a few.