Migratory birds shifting north

[deminks]

http://www.americablog.com/2009/02/migratory-birds-shifting-north.html

Anyone who spends time in the garden or outdoors knows that the weather patterns are changing. The deniers prefer ignoring reality, though maybe they just ignore the outdoors and instead, cherry pick with individual days rather than seasonal and annual patterns.

When it comes to global warming, the canary in the coal mine isn't a canary at all. It's a purple finch. As the temperature across the U.S. has gotten warmer, the purple finch has been spending its winters more than 400 miles farther north than it used to.

And it's not alone.

An Audubon Society study to be released Tuesday found that more than half of 305 birds species in North America, a hodgepodge that includes robins, gulls, chickadees and owls, are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.

The purple finch was the biggest northward mover. Its wintering grounds are now more along the latitude of Milwaukee, Wis., instead of Springfield, Mo.

Bird ranges can expand and shift for many reasons, among them urban sprawl, deforestation and the supplemental diet provided by backyard feeders. But researchers say the only explanation for why so many birds over such a broad area are wintering in more northern locales is global warming.

(end snip, emphasis mine)

Ya hear that, right wingnutters? Global Effing Warming. It's not about a snow in Texas. It's about climate. Even the birds get it. Why can't you reich wingers get it?

I have had a flock of blue birds in my yard since January, cardinals. finches, jays and robins overwinter, and today I have red wing blackbirds, doves, and grackles. It is February 11, and I have blackbirds and bluebirds in my yard. I am in northeast Kansas, and growing up all I ever saw in the winter was starlings until March when the robins came.

[AndyA]

1. I have flowers and plants in flower beds that are supposed to be annuals.

You plant them when it's warm, they grow and bloom, and they go away at the end of the season. They aren't supposed to come back year after year, but they are coming back now, they aren't dying.

It saves money, but it's strange to see stuff coming back that isn't supposed to.