Dark Green=Resident, Light Green=Breeding, Light Blue=Passage, Dark Blue=Non-Breeding
Controversy is still raging over whether the climate is changing permanently. We have a deep interest in this, because batteries could help reverse it through sufficient renewable energy. The debate is hobbled by a spider web of business and political pressure groups. We stumbled over evidence barn swallows already know the climate is shifting.
Barn Swallows Adapting to Changing Climate
Barn swallows are small, insect-eating birds that spend much of their lives migrating between southern and northern hemispheres. However, British Ornithology Trust – see link below – says this pattern is changing. One wedge of this trek traditionally begins when UK autumn weather becomes too cold to support flying insects.
UK barn swallows have spent their summers wheeling through South African skies since time immemorial. And no wonder they need celebrate, because they have flown 6,000 miles over 6 weeks to begin their summer holidays! And then, when the weather cools, they return to United Kingdom.
Falling seasonal temperature has triggered this response so consistently the British speak of ‘the first swallow of summer’. While South Africans mark the arrival of their summer by the first swallows wheeling in the sky. But that is changing, say scientists from British Ornithology Trust.
Could Climate Shift Could End This Tradition
The two destinations appeal to barn swallows because the two countries are almost diagrammatically opposite, on two sides of the equator. Although United Kingdom is 1,000 miles further from that midpoint than South Africa.
The last few years have seen milder UK winters during which some barn swallows have remained there. They have also become less common sightings in South Africa. Does this mean changing climate is re-setting their biological clock?
‘This is indeed remarkable,’ British Ornithology Trust ’s CTO Juliet Vickery says. ‘We haven’t got to go back too far to remember winters when it would have been impossible for swallows to survive the freezing temperatures. But as our winters get milder it is something we may see more and more.’
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