http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21883-ignore-shocking-decline-of-farm-birds-at-our-peril.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

New information from the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme shows that widespread farmland birds are declining across Europe at an alarming rate. The downward trend in an index of population of 36 specialist farmland birds for the last 30 years equates to an estimated loss of 297 million farmland birds in Europe during that period – a 50 per cent decline since 1980. That is a lot of biodiversity in anyone's money.

Just one example is the eponymous skylark, whose song is so evocative of the countryside in summer. Its numbers have fallen by nearly half – we have lost 37 million of them. While the rate of decline has slowed in recent decades, the downward trend continues and there's little room for optimism.
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Iv said it before.
If the bugs and rats wont eat it, should we?

For all the GMO foods planted..
Birds around farms seem to becoming decimated.  Is it because they Cant eat the grains or that the Insects on these farms are NOT THERE...or have we harmed the ecosystem enough with augmented plants, they they are BAD for anything except to become a WEED.

Understand, that mankind has taken over MUCH land area to make FARMS..  Wwe killed off many animals and re-engineered the LANd to grow what WE WANTED..  Be it a Swamp or salt flat area..we changed the soils and the plants that were THERE..decimated species and the requirements to survive for both animals and MANKIND.

Whats eponymous about a skylark?

In the UK, Eurasian Skylark numbers have declined over the last 30 years, as determined by the Common Bird Census started in the early 1960s by The British Trust for Ornithology. There are now only 10% of the numbers that were present 30 years ago.

Whats eponymous about a skylark?

Good question. I have no idea. I think they probably meant ubiquitous.

BTW, this is typical of our species. We are really bad at recognizing and dealing with the long term affects we're having on the planet. As with climate change, pollution, fertilizer runoff, ocean acidification, overfishing, and a host of other problems caused by there being entirely too many humans on the planet and our "totalitarian agriculture" practices. I believe this term was used in Daniel Quinn's series beginning with Ismael. It describes (accurately, IMHO) the way we practice agriculture to the exclusion of all else on the planet, taking over all potential habitats without a thought for the other species with whom we share the planet or even other peoples and cultures who once existed who did not practice this. Some small groups of people still do not practice totalitarian agriculture. But, that number is shrinking dramatically.