Bird Migrations in a Warming World
The Guardian has published a report exploring how global warming is affecting the natural migration patterns of different bird species. The article Bird Migration Is Changing is beautifully illustrated with a number of impressive animated maps. My favorite of these mapped illustrations tracks the path of a storm-chasing seabird, the Desertas petrel. The Desertas petrel spends almost all its life far out at sea, rarely coming to land except to breed on the Desertas Islands near Madeira. Out at sea, storms stir up the ocean surface and bring prey such as squid and fish closer to the top. The Desertas petrel therefore follows these weather systems in order to find richer feeding zones. This behavior is wonderfully visualized in the article by overlaying the GPS track of the Desertas petrel with a dynamic wind speed layer that uses color to reveal the path and intensity of a passing cyclone over the Atlantic Ocean. The animation vividly captures how the bird appears to “chase” the storm, ...
