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hatrack

(59,442 posts)
Sun Sep 13, 2020, 11:33 AM Sep 2020

Anecdotal, But NorCal/Nevada Birdwatchers Note Absence Of Birds - Vulnerable To Bad Air, Smoke

As many Westerners awoke this week to a sky so muted by smoke from raging wildfires that it looked like night, backyard bird watchers noticed something else: Silence at their bird feeders. Or worse yet, dead birds. "I live in Folsom—have not seen a bird or heard a bird chirp this morning," said Jodi Root, a member of the California Birding group on Facebook. "We live in northern Nevada and have noticed the same thing," added Karen Holden of Gardnerville. "Same here in Napa," said Tammy Saunders "very quiet which just adds to the eeriness of the orange colored dark sky."

And on it went. Nearly 100 serious birdwatchers from throughout California and parts of Nevada responded to an impromptu survey posted on the Facebook group. And the majority said they had observed a pronounced drop in the number of birds flying in for a nibble at feeders or sips of water at bird baths, as well as a reduction in the variety of species. So what is going on? Wild bird populations are already in major decline. But in recent weeks they have been subjected to smoke and extreme high temperatures that reached a crescendo on Wednesday, when an extraordinary upper atmospheric layer of smoke turned wide swaths of the California sky into palettes of orange and brown. The sky was so dramatic that former President Barack Obama tweeted a photograph of it to call out the need to address climate change.

Birds have highly sensitive respiratory systems—canaries were brought into coal mines in the early 20th century to detect the presence of toxic gases. Now the missing birds seem to be playing a similar role for a planet on fire. While not all that much is known about how birds respond to smoke, Andrew Stillman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut who studies birds in burned-out habitats, said this much is clear: Birds live on the edge, and extreme changes can have dire consequences. Teasing out the answers can be complicated, because research on the long-term impacts of wildfire smoke on birds is severely lacking. But Olivia Sanderfoot, a researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Washington, said the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. "Overall, it seems like the anecdotes suggest that there is a decline in bird activity during smoke events," she said.

EDIT

Stillman, who works with researcher Morgan Tingley at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that birds "cannot escape like humans by going indoors." Birds are more at risk partly because of the way they are built: Their respiratory systems are more sensitive than those of humans, Lederer said. They do not have a diaphragm and "They are putting a lot more air through their lungs than we are," he said.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10092020/california-wildfire-smoke-birds-climate-change

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Anecdotal, But NorCal/Nevada Birdwatchers Note Absence Of Birds - Vulnerable To Bad Air, Smoke (Original Post) hatrack Sep 2020 OP
birds have adapted to smoke for millions of years...I too was worried about the flock of samnsara Sep 2020 #1
I noticed that on the worst days here. No birds. hunter Sep 2020 #2

samnsara

(17,570 posts)
1. birds have adapted to smoke for millions of years...I too was worried about the flock of
Sun Sep 13, 2020, 11:40 AM
Sep 2020

...wild turkeys that hang out on my property but I figure they have adapted and know how to escape this smoke better than we mere humans do. When we had ashfall from Mt St Helen the eerie absence of the birds was what I remember most...that and the tons of ash in my yard, my hair and my teeth!

hunter

(38,264 posts)
2. I noticed that on the worst days here. No birds.
Sun Sep 13, 2020, 01:52 PM
Sep 2020

They were quiet too.

We had a couple of days where the sky went from dark at dawn to dark orange with a dust of light ashes.


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