None flew over the coockoo's nest: A world without

birds
Could we be facing a future without birds? Our reliance on pesticides has cut a
swathe (a row of cut grain left by a scythe) through their numbers. We must act now, argues Kate
Ravilious
MIXED TENSES and WORD FORMATION
(Adapted from an article in the Independent, 15 November 2010)

Scanning the sky with his binoculars, he searches carefully for a sign of movement: the steady beat
of a blackbird's wings, the fluttering of a flock of starlings. It ______________ (1 BE) a week now
since he ______________ (2 SEE) the starlings: just four of them flitting (passing quickly) from tree to
tree, feasting on the autumn berries.
Birds are a real ____________ (3 RARE) these days. In his _____________ (4 BOY), he recalls,
he _____________ (5 WATCH) the acrobatics of entire flocks as they ducked and dived after
insects. But now the skies are silent, barring (excepting) the hum of the odd airplane. Turning back to his
fruit and vegetable patch, he continues the ______________ (6 LABOUR) task of pollinating the
raspberry plants by hand, gently brushing pollen onto the slender stigmas inside the flowers. In the
past, bees, wasps, butterflies and flies _______________ (7 DO) this job for him; nowadays such
insects are likewise a rarity. Farmers instead resort to robot bees to pollinate their crops: tiny
motors, encased in fuzzy fabric, which hover from flower to flower.
__________________ (8 THIS BLEAK OUTLOOK/ BE) a reality for future generations? It is
nearly 50 years since Rachel Carson ______________ (9 WRITE) Silent Spring, the book that
warned of environmental damage the pesticide DDT ______________ (10 CAUSE). Today, DDT
use _______________ (11 BAN) except in _________________ (12 EXCEPT) circumstances, yet
we still _______________ (13 NOT SEEM) __________________ (14 TAKE) on board Carson's
fundamental message.
According to Henk Tennekes, a researcher at the Experimental Toxicology Services in Zutphen, the
Netherlands, the threat of DDT _______________ (15 SUPERSEDE replace) by a relatively new class
of insecticide, known as the neonicotinoids. In his book The Systematic Insecticides: A Disaster in
the Making, published this month, Tennekes draws all the evidence together, _____________ (16
MAKE) the case that neonicotinoids _________________ (17 CAUSE) a catastrophe in the insect
world, which is having a knock-on effect for many of our birds.
Already, in many areas, the skies are much quieter than they ______________ (18 BE). All over
Europe, many species of birds have suffered a population crash. Spotting a house sparrow, common
swift (hudournik) or a flock of starlings (škorci) used to be _____________ (19 REMARK), but today they
are a more of an unusual sight. Since 1977, Britain's house-sparrow population _______________
(20 SHRINK) by 68 per cent.
Ornitologists _______________ (21 TRY) desperately to work out what is behind this rapid
decline. Urban development, hermetically sealed houses and barns, designer gardens and changing
farming practices __________________ (22 ALL BLAME), but exactly why these birds have fallen
from the skies is still largely _______________ (23 EXPLAIN).
“The evidence shows that bird species suffering massive decline since 1990s rely on insects for
their diet,” says Tennekes.
So what has happened to all the insects? In the 90s, a new class of insecticide – the neonicotinoids -
________________ (24 INTRODUCE). Beekeepres were the first people ________________ (25
NOTICE) a problem, as their bees began to desert their hives and die, phenomenon known as
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
The first cases were in France in 1994, but the epidemic quickly fanned out across Europe, and by
2006 CCD reached the US too. Between 2006 and 2009 one third of American beekeepres reported
cases of colony collapse. Aside from the _______________ (26 LOSE) of revenue in honey sales,
this is _____________ (27 WORRY) news because honey bees are one of the world's most
important polliators, and 35% of ________________ (28 AGRICULTURE) crops rely on
pollinators.

KEY
1. has been
2. saw
3. rarity
4. boyhood
5. would watch/ used to watch/ watched
6. laborious
7. would have done
8. Will this bleak outlook be
9. wrote
10. was causing
11. is banned
12. exceptional
13. don't seem
14. to have taken
15. has been superseded
16. to make
17. are causing
18. used to be / were
19. unremarkable
20. has shrunk
21. have been trying
22. have all been blamed
23. unexplained
24. was introduced
25. to notice
26. loss
27. worrying
28. agricultural