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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took emergency action to list the Miami blue Cyclargus thomasi bethunebakeri as an endangered species, recognizing what butterfly-watchers in South Florida have known for decades: This nickel-sized butterfly is on the brink of extinction. Once common throughout South Florida, Miami blues have suffered near-total declines “for reasons that no one knows,” in the words of Jeffrey Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association.

A disease spreading rapidly through the state’s bat population has led to a 70 percent decline in the number of bats hibernating in mines and other sites surveyed by state researchers over the past two years, wildlife officials said.

A fungus known as White Nose Syndrome is killing off many species of bats in New Hampshire and across the Northeast after it first appeared in the state a few years ago. “A 70 percent decline in our small sample of hibernation sites is dramatic,” said John Kanter, a wildlife biologist with state Fish and Game who runs the state’s non-game and endangered species wildlife program. The state monitors the bat population by regularly surveying eight mine sites around the state where bats are known to hibernate.

Recent figures, from the annual Breeding Birds Survey carried out by the British Trust for Ornithology, show that between 1995 and 2009, the turtle dove Streptopelia turtur dropped in numbers by 74 per cent, the wood warbler Phylloscopus sibilatrix by 63 per cent and the nightingale Luscinia megarhynchos by 60 per cent. The whinchat Saxicola rubetra and the yellow wagtail Motacilla flava both declined by 55 per cent, the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca by 51 per cent, the cuckoo Cuculus canorus by 48 per cent and the spotted flycatcher Muscicapa striata by 47 per cent. "These losses are unsustainable, and if left unchecked will put these species in danger of being wiped out across large parts of the UK", said Graham Madge of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

The guild of ‘aerial insectivores’ – birds that specialize on feeding on flying insects – includes Whip-poor-wills Caprimulgus vociferus, nighthawks, swifts, swallows, martins, and flycatchers. Early results from the second Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas indicated some startling declines and even range contractions for this guild. The magnitude of the declines, especially within the past 20 years or so, is alarming.

For decades now, Ontario’s skies have been losing not only whip-poor-wills Caprimulgus vociferus but many of their fellow aerial insectivores – that agile “guild,” or group, of birds that feasts on the wing, snapping up airborne insects. “Frankly, most of the avian insectivores are declining in northeastern North America,” says Mike Cadman, a songbird biologist with Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS), Ontario region, in Burlington. He quickly reels off a list of species: “Swallows, nightjars, a lot of the flycatchers and the swifts … We have no clue why that would be, and it seems fairly consistent across the group.”

For the first time ever in Canada, the Whip-poor-will Caprimulgus vociferus has joined the ranks of bird species facing declines in their populations. At their annual meeting in April, 2009 the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, or COSEWIC, recommended that the Whippoorwill be added to Canada's list of species at risk. Their recommendation is based on a 10% decline over the past decade for the species due to declining habitat and fluctuating insect populations.

It is estimated that there are now around one million hedgehogs in Britain, representing a decline of 25 per cent over the past decade. In some parts of the country, the fall could be as high as 50 per cent. Such is the rate of decline that the long term survival of the hedgehog in Britain is now in doubt. The study was led by Toni Bunnell, a retired zoology lecturer, whose team compiled the league table of species under threat based on how fast their population was dwindling. Dr Bunnell, who runs a hedgehog sanctuary near York, cited a number of reasons for the decline in the population. “Pesticides have eliminated much of their food such as caterpillars and beetles. Then there has been a reduction of habitat in the countryside which they are having to share with predatory badgers,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

A comprehensive survey of Tricolored Blackbirds Agelaius tricolor in California has confirmed that the population of the species has declined nearly 35 percent in the last three years. The 2011 survey, conducted by Audubon California with the help of more than 100 volunteers, estimated the population to be about 259,000 birds, down from approximately 395,000 in 2008. Historic populations once numbered in the millions.

Among the Estonian multispecies indices, the woodland bird index shows a steady increase until 2000, followed by a moderate negative trend in 2001-2006, and a sharp decline in 2007-2010. The farmland bird index largely follows the woodland bird index, but shows two distinctive declines in 1994-1996 and in 2007-2010. The species that contributed most to the 2007-2010 declines were Tringa totanus, Motacilla flava, Crex crex, Passer montanus, Motacilla alba, Columba palumbus, Delichon urbicum, Locustella naevia, Acrocephalus schoenobaenus, Parus palustris, Loxia curvirostra, Sitta europaea, Parus cristatus, Dendrocopus major, Oriolus oriolus, Dendrocopus minor, Nucifraga caryocatactes, Parus montanus.