Changes to bird behaviour linked to climate change

Credit: Shutterstock - A new study from researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) rolls back the curtain on half a century of evidence detailing the impact of climate change on more than 60 different bird species. It found that half of all changes to key physical and behavioural bird characteristics since the 1960s can be linked to climate change. The other 50 per cent is due to other unknown environmental factors that have changed at the same time as our climate. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and carried out in conjunction with James Cook University (JCU), focused on birds in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.  "We have shown that climate change is a major driver of these changes in the birds, but there is more at play here than we originally thought," lead author Dr Nina McLean, from the ANU Research School of Biology, said.  "Not only were other unknown changes in the environment equally important in driving changes in the birds, surprisingly they generally did so in the same direction as climate change, such that their effects compounded.   "This study shows that the impact of climate change does not act in isolation and its effects are occurring in a world where the resilience of wildlife is already pushed to the limits due to the many other challenges they are experiencing in a human-dominated landscape.   "These non-climate change driven factors could include urbanisation, changing land use, habitat loss or introducing invasive species into ecosystems, but we can't know their identity for sure yet."  The researchers analysed three key traits as part of their study: the timing of egg laying, body condition of birds, and the number of offspring produced.