Birds are making their way back north after a long a winter.
The timing and route of migration has changed for some species because of earlier springs driven by climate change.
Many bird species are now migrating earlier than they did 30 years ago.
Dr. Morgan Tingley is a professor of ecology at UCLA who’s been studying the impact of climate change on birds.
He says birds that don’t migrate as far are going to be less impacted. They have more information and signs if it’s an early spring 100 or even 500 miles to the north.
“It's the birds that are spending their winters in South America, in particular, that don't have the information, or really the capacity to sort of change their schedules,” said Tingley. “Those are the ones that we see kind of falling behind the most, and where we'd expect some of the greatest impacts.”
As spring comes earlier, birds are starting their migrations earlier, some are starting their breeding a little earlier, taking different routes, or going a little further north.
Since the 1970s, North America has lost roughly 3 billion birds.
Tingley says, so far, climate change doesn’t appear to be a major factor in that population decline.
He and other researchers expect to see impacts from climate change 20 to 30 years down the line.
“Birds are able to more or less adapt well to that. But the question is like, when does that stop? When? What are the limits of their ability to actually kind of keep pace with a changing climate or changing seasons, and when they can't keep up as much, that's when we're going to see population declines in the future,” said Tingley.
Tingley says one of the best things people can do to help birds adapt is make sure they have habitat.
Loss of habitat, developments, and agriculture are some of the biggest drivers in population declines.
“As much as we can do to kind of conserve land, to protect habitats for them, and generally, to decrease other threats,” said Tingley. “Whether or not that's called threats from window collisions or threats from outside predators, there's lots of things that we can do to try and increase their populations so that they can have as much flexibility and as much adaptive potential.”
Tingley says it’s not all doom and gloom as he’s seen the adaptive capacity of many birds. Again, the big question is if they’ll be able to adapt at the pace climate is changing.
Some birders may also look forward to seeing new species show up in their backyard.
As we reach peak migration, Tingley encourages people to get outdoors and observe. People can help contribute to data to researchers like Tingley by tracking observations through sites like eBird and iNaturalist.
“If you're a hardcore bird watcher or even a casual bird watcher who can identify species, tracking your observations and putting them in those online platforms, can be really, really valuable for us to try and understand how species are actually adapting and coping,” said Tingley.
