SCIENTISTS at Columbia Universities Ornithology Department have found “alarming” evidence that birds have been forced to adapt quickly to rapid environmental change due to climate change. Doctor Bradford has been an ornithologist at Columbia for 37 years and specializes in behavioral changes in various bird species including those who have gone extinct. Bradford says that during her time at the university at least 56% of birds species have gone extinct. “It’s devastating” she says “you learn so much about these wonderful creatures only to find out a year later the only thing that remains is the birds carcass I was studying. Sometimes we don’t even get samples of birds we might get a feather or a bone or nothing at all… like they never even existed to begin with.”
Bradford’s study started in 2003 with the discovery of a new vocalization used by the longtailed barb, “birds do have the ability to change their songs which are also determined by the environment but in these conditions especially - rural Nevada where a lot of draught had persisted and various bodies of running water were now scarce. The new vocalization we roughly interpreted it as the birds communicating with others about water scarcity.” Her findings? Birds used to only drink water from running sources, if the water was in motion the birds would drink from it but if the water was still, say a pond with no running water, the birds wouldn’t drink from this source because the chances the water is contaminated is high since it is stagnant. “The barbs communicated to one another that they had to start drinking from non kinetic sources of water or else they would die. During the time I was conducting the study, about 52% had died and that’s only three years. In three years the birds had decreased by half. Now they’re extinct.”
With these findings, Bradford had conducted multiple other studies around the United States but also places like Mexico, Thailand, Singapore, Pakistan, and Croatia. Bradford found that all species who had no history of drinking water from a still source had now adapted to drink from them. “This is bad because it’s like a desperation, part of their ability to detect danger has been replaced by a bigger danger - that being the climate catastrophe.”
