Songbirds on the US east coast are becoming smaller, a trend thought to be driven by climate changes.  Scarlet tanagers are more than 2% smaller today than in the 1960s. Robert Mulvihill, Powdermill Avian Research Centre

By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News

Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause. A study of almost half a million birds, belonging to over 100 species, shows that many are gradually becoming lighter and growing shorter wings. This shrinkage has occurred within just half a century, with the birds thought to be evolving into a smaller size in response to warmer temperatures. However, there is little evidence that the change is harmful to the birds. Details of the discovery are published in the journal Oikos. In biology, there is a general rule of thumb that animals tend to become smaller in warmer climates: an idea known as Bergman’s Rule. Usually this trend can be seen among animal species that live over a range of latitude or altitude, with individuals living at more northern latitudes or higher up cooler mountains being slightly larger than those below, for example. Quite why this happens is not clear, but it prompted one group of scientists to ask the question: would animals respond in the same way to climate change? To find out, Dr Josh Van Buskirk of the University of Zurich, Switzerland and colleagues Mr Robert Mulvihill and Mr Robert Leberman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Rector, Pennsylvania, US decided to evaluate the sizes of hundreds of thousands of birds that pass through the Carnegie Museum’s Powdermill ringing station, also in Pennsylvania. They examined the records of 486,000 individual birds that had been caught and measured at the ringing station from 1961 to 2007. These birds belonged to 102 species, arriving over different seasons. Each was weighed. It also had the length of its wings measured, recorded as wing chord length, or the distance between the bird’s wrist to the tip of the longest primary feather. Their sample included local resident bird species, overwintering species, and even long distance migrants arriving from the Neotropics. What they found was striking. Of 83 species caught during spring migration, 60 have become smaller over the 46 year study period, weighing less and having shorter wings. Of the 75 species migrating in autumn, 66 have become smaller. …

Climate linked to smaller birds