Birds blossomed as cities shut down

By Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor

We all saw those stories last year about wildlife reclaiming the land amid coronavirus lockdowns. Some were true; some not so much. But we knew it’d be a while before we could say just how significant they really were.

Scientists in North America have been particularly interested in how birds responded. That’s because two years ago, research showed that the continent has lost three billion birds since 1970—mainly because of pesticide use and habitat loss, but also from collisions with glass windows, cats, and other causes.

There’s been hope that one silver lining of the pandemic would be the positive ripple effects of the “anthropause”—last spring’s period of reduced traffic, air pollution, and noise. Now, the data are coming in, and it’s good news.

Using observations submitted to the popular eBird app, scientists discovered that 66 out of the 82 bird species they looked at changed their behavior during that time, Elizabeth Anne Brown reports. In particular, warblers and sparrows started taking advantage of human habitats within a matter of weeks, coming closer to major roads and airports than ever before. That’s especially good news because these two groups account for nearly half of the bird decline since 1970, says study author Nicola Koper, a professor of conservation biology. More habitat gives these beleaguered birds a better chance of survival—if only for this season. (Pictured, a red-tailed hawk leaving its nest in New York City, above; gliding over a city street, below.)

So what about the future, when things return to normal? The hustle and bustle of city life is coming back, and shutting down cities obviously is not a viable option for bird conservation. Renewed efforts to reduce noise in cities are just Band-Aids, some scientists say, but it’s the best we have for now.

The amazing thing we’ve learned from the shutdown, however, is just how quickly birds can alter their behavior once we do. “We can have an effect and benefit them almost right away,” Koper says.

Do you get this newsletter daily? If not, sign up here or forward this to a friend. 

INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY

Fox vs. frog: Photographer Kirsten Ferguson has been documenting generations of a red fox family near her home in Paisley, Scotland. On a summer morning, she spotted the fox pictured above chasing something in the grass. She captured a leap by both animals at the same time: one to hunt, the other to survive. The image was a Nat Geo Your Shot monthly Editor’s Pick. Want to learn more about foxes? Here are red fox facts, the tale of how tiny island foxes survived years of threats, and photos of rescued foxes that found a refuge.

TODAY IN A MINUTE

Bee swarm kills penguins: A swarm of more than 60 bees has killed a group of endangered penguins near Cape Town, the BBC reports. The protected birds had no other physical injuries aside from stings. It was the first known attack at Boulders Beach, which attracts more than 60,000 tourists a year.

Crab decline: Valuable crab populations off Alaska are in a “very scary” population decline in a warming Bering Sea, the Seattle Times reports. The annual survey of a research vessel in June found dramatic drops in all sizes of snow crabs and, most worryingly, a 99 percent fall in the number of immature female crabs. Rapid climate changes have roiled the sea, harming one of the most productive marine ecosystems on Earth.

Central Park owl: Barry, the beloved owl who was killed in a collision with a truck last month, had lethal amounts of rat poison in her bloodstream. A necropsy found that the poison could have impaired the 2-year-old's flying, the City reports. She was at risk for a “fatal hemorrhage,” even without the collision.

How humans lost their tails: It may have been a simple genetic mutation, according to researchers who made a genetic change on mice with the same results. “It’s as close to a smoking gun as one could hope for,” Cornell geneticist Cedric Feschotte, who was not involved in the new study, tells the New York Times. The change in what would become humans occurred some 25 million years ago.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

Where the bees roam: To be precise, 497 species of bees buzz through about six square miles of the San Bernardino Valley, straddling Arizona and Mexico. That’s the highest concentration of bee species in the world, representing 14 percent of the species in the United States, Douglas Main writes. (Pictured above, solitary bees known as Svastra duplocincta.)

READ ON 

IN A FEW WORDS

THE LAST GLIMPSE

The parachuting beavers: Yes, it happened. Idaho turned wood-gnawing, dam-building rodents into skydivers as the state attempted to get the critters into remote areas in 1948. There’s film of it, too. The initiative involved “tying boxes of beavers to parachutes left over from World War II, then tossing them out of a small plane,”Lucy Sheriff writes. The program cost taxpayers $7 per beaver and was developed as a safer, faster alternative to relocating them overland on mules. (Pictured above, Idaho officials in 1948 loading a beaver into a wooden box before it’s loaded on a plane and dropped.)

GNAW ON THIS