Bird beaks grow as climate hots up

Birds’ beaks are getting bigger, according to researchers in Australia.

Dr Matthew Symonds, of Deskin’s Centre for Integrative Ecology, examined 410 parrot skins, which had been collected between 1871 and 2008. His team measured the bill-sizes of the specimens and related them to summer temperatures recorded in the areas where the birds had lived during the five years preceding their deaths.

One species, the red-rumped parrot, showed no correlation between bill-size and temperature, but the other four had progressively larger beaks the warmer their environments. Symonds and colleagues argue that the increase in bill size is due to climate change.