Early birds get more than the worm

WITH rising temperatures, courtesy of greenhouse gas emissions, you might expect birds to linger on at migration time, taking an extra ‘sus beag’, before the arduous journey to far-off lands.

However, according to a paper just published in the Journal of the Royal Society, they don’t. In fact, the opposite is the case; global warming, the authors argue, is leading to earlier migration, at least in one prominent wader species.

So what is going on? The elegant black-tailed godwit visits Irish and British estuaries in winter. The ones which come here nest in Iceland. After breeding, godwits roost in tight flocks at high tide along the shores of Icelandic wetlands where ringers catch them using nets attached to projectiles fired from cannons.