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Climate change has New York songbirds lagging spring's quickening arrival

A recent study shows some New York state migrating songbirds lagging on their return trips home each spring.

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Originally published by the Times Union
By Brian Nearing, July 20, 2017

While flight delays can be a headache for human travelers, climate change has some New York state migrating songbirds lagging on their return trips home each spring, according to a recent scientific study.

Eight different birds that return north to New York from Central and South America were listed in a scientific study by the University of Connecticut on how climate change is disrupting bird migration in the U.S.

"This study suggests that some birds are trying to keep up by returning a little earlier, but they are not keeping up," said Mike Burger, director of conservation science for Audubon New York. He said the study was "troubling, but not hopeless," adding that songbird populations are not yet showing signs of damage.

According to the peer-reviewed study, the arrival of spring  in the Northeast — with the reemergence of plants and insects —has been shifting steadily earlier by an average of about a day a year since 2005.

Birds from the northeast that spend winters thousands of miles away to the south time return flights north based on the seasonal position of the sun. While the sun's position remains unchanged, spring keeps coming earlier in the Northeast.

This growing disconnect means while spring plants and insects, which are the food needed by birds to thrive, mate and feed young, and are steadily coming out earlier,  the birds' arrival fails to keep pace.

The average departure date of these birds is moving ahead only by about a half-day each year, so at the end of a decade, the winged travelers are a full five days behind spring's arrival, according to the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Scientific Reports.

"It is not like these birds have an app on their phone that can tell them the weather in New York," said Morgan Tingley, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UConn and study author.

Tingley said this escalating timing gap, if it continues, could have birds arriving too late to take full advantage of emerging food. Some insects needed as food could have emerged already, or have grown too large to be fed to young birds, he said.

And that could harm a bird's ability to breed and raise its young. "Baby birds need insects. Lots of them," said Tingley.

Nine birds are continuing to fall further behind the arrival of spring, and eight of those birds are found in New York.

Those include great crested flycatchers, indigo bunting, scarlet tanagers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, eastern wood pewees, yellow-billed cuckoos, northern parulas, and blue-winged warblers.

Burger said that the climate is changing faster than the birds can adapt. In the coming years, he said, scientists need to monitor bird breeding behavior to learn if populations could be threatened.

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