Birds Carry History of Pollution in Their Feathers

[douglas9]

Scientists who want to study the effects of pollution and climate change don’t need to look any further than a feather.

Researchers from the Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago released a study Monday in which they document their use of discoloration of bird feathers in museum collections to determine the amount of pollutants in the air when the birds were collected.

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, details changes in feather colors of five species of birds that are widespread in North America.

The birds – selected for their lighter-colored feathers – had historical counterparts that were darker due to coal pollution that deposited soot onto the feathers.

“The soot on these birds’ feathers allowed us to trace the amount of black carbon in the air over time, and we found that the air at the turn of the century was even more polluted than scientists previously thought,” said Shane DuBay, one of the authors of the paper.

https://www.courthousenews.com/birds-carry-history-pollution-feathers/

[douglas9]

1. Soot-Covered Bird Corpses Cough Up Environmental Secrets

It’s a story about mystery, grime, and a phoenix rising from the ashes—so of course it started in Chicago.

The Field Museum, a Greco-Roman citadel of natural history on the shores of Lake Michigan, is famous for its Egyptology exhibit and for displaying Sue, the largest T. rex ever discovered. But among scientists and biologists, it carries a different distinction. In its basement and archives, the Field Museum holds more than 3 million specimens: drawers and drawers full of the stuffed corpses of long-dead creatures.

Among these dead are hundreds of Illinoisan birds, many of them captured and killed in the decades after the city’s founding. For years, curators and collection managers had noticed that something was off about some of them. Birds from the late 19th century were noticeably darker than other specimens of their own species from other time periods or other locations. They suspected the birds had been stained by the soot that once choked Chicago’s skies—but without looking at the birds more closely, they couldn’t be sure.


https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/what-dead-birds-know-about-the-respiratory-rasp-of-the-palisades/542685/