There are about 50 billion birds of 9,700 species on Earth, according to research at the University of New South Wales Sydney.
“There are many rare species and comparatively few common species,” the researchers reported their findings in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
They suggested that research is needed in bird abundance across biogeographic realms and feeding guilds as well as the consequences of life history of individual species.
Rare bird species in general will be impacted more severely by drought, which seems inevitable for large areas of the U.S. this year, heat waves and other extreme weather events associated with climate change, according to research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Rarer species have more specialized habitat and food requirements. This is a general rule in ecology,” noted postdoctoral researcher Jeremy Cohen. “More common species usually have more options. If habitat quality declines due to drought, a generalist can go somewhere else.
Commonly occurring species like crows were more resilient than rare birds, particularly if the drought was severe and long-lasting.
The researchers used data from eBird, a global citizen-science initiative where bird enthusiasts submit checklists of bird sightings online, to look at 109 North American bird species over a 15-year period.
When it comes to heat waves, Cohen said, “long-distance migrants were not super affected by really hot periods. They winter in tropical environments and should be tolerant of heat.”
However, resident birds and short-distance migrants such as robins and red-winged blackbirds responded negatively to heat waves, with their numbers sometimes declining 10-30 percent over several weeks.
“If birds are truly winged sentinels of climate change, the greater likelihood of drought, flooding and extreme temperature conditions like heat waves will have significant consequences,” said Ben Zuckerberg, forest and wildlife ecology professor. “We need to think about how we help species adapt to climate extremes.”
In a study recently published in the journal Global Change Biology, the researchers show that not all birds are equally vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather resulting from climate change. As the planet warms, some species will adapt while others may struggle without conservation measures. The results of the study could help conservationists target their efforts to vulnerable species, as well as locations where extreme weather events are predicted.
Of all those bird species, imperiled and otherwise, the frogmouth of southeast Asia and Australia is the most Instagramable bird on the planet, according to research at the University of Konstanz in Germany.
Looking at the largest bird-focused Instagram accounts, the researchers compared the “like” patterns of followers of those accounts among 23,818 bird photos to come up with likeability scores.
The frogmouth, which an ornithologist once described as “the world’s most unfortunate-looking bird,” topped the rankings.
Other birds high in the ranking were colorful pigeons with decorative plumage like the emerald turaco with its crown-like head feathers and the hoopoe also wearing a distinct feather crown and showing off typical high-contrast feathering.
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