Global warming affecting migratory birds, says Indian ornithologist

Newstrack India: Indian ornithologist has said that global warming and the rising temperatures have brought about an imbalance in the timing of the winter arrival of migratory birds and the food stock available to them. World over experts have been saying that rising temperatures could wipe out more than half of the earth's species in the next few centuries, linking climate change to past mass extinctions.

Unchecked climate change could force up to 72 per cent of bird species in some areas into extinction, but the world still has a chance to limit the losses, conservation group WWF said in a report. From migratory insect-eaters to tropical honeycreepers and cold-water penguins, birds are highly sensitive to changing weather conditions and many are already being adversely affected by global warming, the new study said.

Many migratory birds are now missing out on vital foods as trees are bearing fruit earlier than the scheduled time due to global warming widely blamed by scientists on emissions from burning fossil fuels. Echoing a fear over the diminishing numbers of birds due to this imbalance, Indian ornithologist Satish Pandey said, an imbalance was creeping in the cycle of arrival of migratory birds and availability of food to them….

Barnacle Geese flock (Branta leucopsis) during autumn migration in the sky over Finland, where the so called "Fourth population", originating from Novaya Zemlya, resides during summer. Photo by Thermos, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License