How did this winter's record-setting cold and snow affect local ecosystems — and what does that mean for farmers, fishermen, and everybody else?
Today, we turn our attention to our feathered friends. Whether you're an avid birdwatcher or just a backyard bird feeder, you may have noticed some unusual things going on this year. WGBH News science editor Heather Goldstone joined Morning Edition host Bob Seay with more details on how birds have fared this winter.
Bob Seay: This was a hard winter for all of us. What kinds of birds are most vulnerable to the cold and snow?
Heather Goldstone: Massachusetts has become the northern-most limit of where many traditionally southern birds can live and spend the winter.
I say "has become" because, of course, Massachusetts has, on average, along with the rest of the globe, gotten significantly warmer over the past several decades.
Birds like Carolina wren, red-bellied woodpeckers, even cardinals — relative newcomers from down south. If, like the cardinal, those birds are the types to eat seeds and can rely on bird feeders, they have a leg up during a winter like this one.
Hit hard: small birds, particularly insectivores, that need to get to the ground to find bugs. Six-plus weeks of solid snow cover toward the end of the season, when other food sources may have been exhausted, could be too much.
Trevor Lloyd-Evans, who heads up land bird banding efforts at the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, showed me one such casualty — a Carolina wren.
Seay: Has all the ice had any effect on shorebirds or birds that eat fish?
Goldstone: Massachusetts is a major wintering area for waterfowl, and Trevor Lloyd-Evans says they've seen some deaths related to the ice cover on ponds and coastal waters.
Seay: What about migratory birds who may just be returning from farther south? Could the cold and snow — even though it's melted now — still affect them?
Goldstone: It could. There are two types of migrants. First are those who go perhaps Florida or the Caribbean, but stay in this hemisphere … As global temperatures have risen, those birds have been coming back earlier and earlier — by as much as a week or more.
Seay: So are they coming back later this year because of then cold?
Goldstone: Yes and no. Remember, global average temperatures have been record-warm this winter … Trevor told me they think they're seeing a bit of a pile-up just to our south.
Seay: Okay, that's one kind of migrant. What's the other?
Goldstone: Deep, southerly migrants who may go as far away as South America, and they don't have any clue while they're down there what the weather is like back here.
Seay: Put all of this into perspective.
Goldstone: Timing and persistence — the long cold, snowy stretch blocking access to the ground toward the end of winter makes this season potentially deadlier than other severe winters we've seen.
One season can be enough to throw off a population. Trevor Lloyd-Evans recounted one story from a severe winter in England in the 1960s that he said it took one species a decade to recover from. But, in general, he's more optimistic than that.
Beyond next fall, of course, the bigger question is whether this was just a one-off occurrence, or whether we’re getting an early taste of what more winters may be like as climate change progresses. That, of course, is a question we won't be able to answer for years. While there are plausible climate change-related explanations for cold, snowy winters like this one, it's simply not possible to know at this point whether this is a blip or the beginning of a trend.
