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For people, the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were a stressful time, marked by fear, isolation, canceled plans and uncertainty. But for birds living in developed areas of the Pacific Northwest, reduced noise and disturbance from pandemic lockdowns may have allowed them to use a wider range of urban habitats.
A new University of Washington study led by Olivia Sanderfoot reports that as many birds are just as likely to be found in highly developed urban areas as they are in less developed green spaces during of the peak of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The paper was published August 11 in the journal Scientific Reports.
“Our findings suggest that some birds may use more spaces in cities because our human footprint is slightly lighter,” said Sanderfoot, who completed the study as a doctoral researcher. at the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and is now a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“For about half of the species we observed, neither land use nor canopy cover had any effect on their site use. That’s very interesting, because we expect that if a habitat is mostly covered with concrete or plants will tell you something about what birds are there,” Sanderfoot said.
Black-capped Chickadee, copyright Glyn Sellors, from surfbirds galleries
In the spring of 2020, Sanderfoot and colleagues recruited more than 900 community scientists in the Pacific Northwest to participate in the study. Volunteers chose their own monitoring sites – mostly backyards and parks where they could safely comply with public health orders – and recorded the birds they observed during a 10-minute period when at least once a week. This community science approach allowed researchers to gather data despite the lockdowns and gave many volunteers a welcome distraction from the stresses of the pandemic.
“I’d love to be a part of it!” said Nadine Santo Pietro, a study volunteer, in a written comment as part of the project. “I signed up to observe once a week for 10 minutes but it turned out to be much more than that. … I’m learning a lot! And it’s given me something positive to focus on at odd times where we are now.”
Among the 35 species that showed the strongest behavioral changes were some of the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic, including black-capped chickadees, great blue herons, downy woodpeckers and Wilson’s warblers. The researchers focused on 46 bird species overall, which were observed by study volunteers in more than 6,000 individual surveys.
To compare the volunteers’ bird observations with human activity, Sanderfoot and his colleagues used data from Google’s Community Mobility Reports, which track the relative amount people move. at different points during the pandemic. While most people spent the spring of 2020 isolated from their homes, many began venturing out again as the school year passed.
As people returned to public spaces and human activity increased, study volunteers recorded an increase in sightings of several bird species. Because most of it is monitored in parks and backyards, which tend to have more vegetation, provide more canopy cover and offer more resources for birds than other places in cities , this may indicate that these green spaces are an important refuge for urban birds.
“Birds may be elsewhere at the height of lockdowns, because human activity is less disruptive, but then return to vegetated areas as activity picks up again,” Sanderfoot said. “It can tell us how important it is to build green spaces in our cities. That’s the biggest takeaway for me.”
Other co-authors are Joel Kaufman, a professor in the UW Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, and Beth Gardner, an associate professor in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research Program from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
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