The Weather Notebook: Global Warming & Birds

Global Warming & Birds
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Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook. I recently spoke with author Scott Weidensaul, who wrote a book called "Living on the Wind" about bird migration.

One way to monitor changes in climate is to simply go bird watching. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. I recently spoke with Scott Weidensaul, author of "Living on the Wind," a book about birds. And I asked him if there were any noticeable effects on bird behavior as a result of climate change:

SW: "Well, it's obviously going to have an effect and we're starting to see some indications. For example, studies both in the upper Great Lakes region and in parts of Europe are showing that birds are arriving 10 or 12 days earlier in the Spring and leaving 10 or 12 days later in the fall than they did as recently as the 1960's. So, it's changing the timing of migration.

The difficulty of course is that migration is a very delicately balanced system. These birds are moving across thousands of miles and are dependant frequently on ephemeral food resources along the way, like shorebirds that land in the Delaware Bay in the Spring, just when the horseshoe crabs are coming out of the deep water and laying their eggs on the beaches. If there's a disconnect there, if the birds arrive early or later, there's no food for them. And this migration system that carries them 18,000 miles a year may fall apart.

We don't really know what the effects of global climate change are going to be on birds, but it's clear that with many of them it's going to be a fairly significant negative effect."

This relates to a rapidly growing field of interest. That of penology which monitors the changes in nature, the seasonal changes, including those of bird behavior. Scott Weidensaul's book, "Living on the Wind," can be purchased at our website, which is mountwashington.org and I'm sure it's available at your local bookstore or library. Our show is supported by Subaru and the National Science Foundation.