Birds weather global warming
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Times staff writer Alan Zarembo reports that researchers have found that at least one bird population in England has managed to adapt to global warming.
The members of the great tit species have timed their breeding season over the last five decades so that their chicks hatch when their main food source, the winter moth caterpillar, is most abundant, the researchers reported Friday in the journal Science. ‘It’s kind of good news to know that some birds can adjust,’ said Anne Charmantier, an evolutionary biologist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research and a coauthor of the study.
The birds have coped with a 4-degree rise in spring temperatures over the last 47 years by laying their eggs an average of 14 days earlier.
-- Alice Short