Post Category → Birds

NYT: Birds Are Dying. Clues Point to El Niño. (Gift Link)

NYT: Birds Are Dying. Clues Point to El Niño. (Gift Link)

Sad news, a story on bird die-off from this week’s NYT Climate Forward newsletter. This comes on top of bird population decline already linked to climate change-related impacts.

Every month, Giovanny Suárez Espín walks a beach near his home in southern Ecuador, monitoring for dead seabirds. Usually, he sees maybe a handful.

But on recent surveys, the sand has been littered with carcasses.

It’s too soon to say for certain what has caused the spike in deaths, which has affected various species, including sooty shearwaters, Peruvian and blue-footed boobies, cormorants, petrels and the critically endangered waved albatross. Die-offs in sea birds aren’t uncommon, and can stem from a variety of factors. In 2023, Ecuador saw mass deaths from avian influenza, said Sebastián Cruz, a seabird ecologist who runs the South American marine bird program for American Bird Conservancy.

It’s too soon to say for certain what has caused the spike in deaths, which has affected various species, including sooty shearwaters, Peruvian and blue-footed boobies, cormorants, petrels and the critically endangered waved albatross. Die-offs in sea birds aren’t uncommon, and can stem from a variety of factors. In 2023, Ecuador saw mass deaths from avian influenza, said Sebastián Cruz, a seabird ecologist who runs the South American marine bird program for American Bird Conservancy.

But this time, he said, looks different. The birds’ bodies are emaciated. Testing for bird flu is needed, but the few necropsies that have been conducted, along with the behavior of surviving birds, show no signs of infection. And critically, sea surface temperatures off the coast have been exceptionally elevated.

Gift link.

Guardian: AI-altered images on birdwatching forums putting research at risk

Guardian: AI-altered images on birdwatching forums putting research at risk.

I see lots of this slop on Facebook and Instagram, encounters that result in an immediate block. If you use AI to enhance your wildlife photos, please stop.

From the story:

Scientists are appealing to birders to limit their use of AI when editing images over fears that it could undermine the credibility of popular citizen science platforms such as iNaturalist and Macaulay Library, which are routinely used in scientific research to monitor species’ habitat range.

The rise of generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini has led to a sharp increase in fake and enhanced images of rare and celebrated birds across wildlife photography forums. Users can create high-quality fake images in seconds – or enhance a photograph by asking the AI to remove a branch or leaf that might be obscuring part of the subject, which can inadvertently introduce significant changes.

In a recent commentary in the science journal Nature, researchers warned that hundreds of fake images have already been discovered on popular databases for recording species. They said that the true scale of the issue is unknown – as many could go undetected – and could contaminate records collected by the public.

Link.

EOS – For the Birds: Solar Panels over Peatlands May Increase Avian Biodiversity

EOS – For the Birds: Solar Panels over Peatlands May Increase Avian Biodiversity.

A new study finds an unusual mix of bird species thriving in a German solar park built on degraded peatland. EOS, the news site of the American Geophysical Union, reports:

When Hanna Rae Martens visits the solar park she studies in northern Germany, she finds meadow pipits perched on the panels. They launch off to catch insects, then return, using the panels like tree branches.

This solar park, built on rewetted peatland, hosts a more diverse bird community than adjacent drained farmland, according to a new study in Ecological Solutions and Evidence. The findings suggest that combining peatland restoration with solar energy development could benefit birds.

And

The solar park attracted a mix of species, including some typically found in wetlands, wooded edges, and urban areas. “The presence of wetland species like reed bunting and the endangered meadow pipit shows that the solar park is truly rewetted,” Martens said. “But we also recorded species like Eurasian tree sparrow and tree pipit, which are not typically found in peatlands. They all appear to use the structure of the solar panels.”

Link.

The Guardian: Listen to Britain’s Dawn chorus of 1976, illustrating the Dramatic Loss of Birdsong in 50 years

The Guardian: Listen to Britain’s dawn chorus of 1976 – the dramatic loss of birdsong in 50 years.

The Guardian recreated a decade-by-decade audio landscape of what the past morning symphonies of birds sounded like before 73 million of them were lost over the past five decades in Great Britain. The story also mentions a ‘shifting baseline syndrome’, a gradual shifting of accepted norms that applies, in this case to the natural environment, be it habit loss, species decline or the rapidly rising temperatures brought on by the climate crisis.

“What we have is a shifting baseline,” said Dr Rob Robinson, a senior scientist at the BTO who researches wild bird populations. “People engaging in nature today are going to think the numbers they are seeing are normal, particularly children. But if you go back 50 years, they would have been able to experience a much richer environment.”

And

This “shifting baseline syndrome” – a gradual shifting of the accepted norm when it comes to the natural environment – is, said nature writer Robert Macfarlane, an “enormously powerful and I think very pernicious, psychological mechanism whereby each new generation measures loss from the degraded baseline that it grew up into. We’re part of a web. We’re wired into the wild world. Birds help us remember that, and they can do it in a very everyday way.”

Give it a listen – possibly the most mindful 35 seconds you’ll experience today.

Solar panels were blamed for wiping out fields, but birds and insects are now rewriting the story beneath them

OKDiario: Solar panels were blamed for wiping out fields, but birds and insects are now rewriting the story beneath them

Done right, fields where solar panels are now being installed are coming back, healthier, and supporting numerous kinds of wildlife, birds included.

For years, the fear around solar farms has been easy to picture. Rows of dark panels, wide open fields, hot metal under the sun, and barely a bird in sight.

New data from Spain is now pushing back against that image. In several solar plants studied in 2025, researchers found more bird species inside the facilities than in nearby agricultural control areas, suggesting that well-managed solar farms can sometimes become unexpected refuges for wildlife rather than empty industrial spaces.

Link.