A conservation coalition’s report says some finches, robins and tits are all laying earlier and puts

A conservation coalition's report says some finches, robins and tits are all laying earlier and puts this down to warming caused by climate change.

Overall, numbers of farmland birds remain about half of what they were in the 1970s, while wintering populations of water birds have risen considerably.

The RSPB said birds were having to respond to climate change to survive.

The State of the UK's Birds report is produced annually by a coalition of conservation groups.

It includes the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), as well as the government agencies responsible for nature conservation in the UK's four national regions.

"This year's report shows that climate change is with us already; and from our gardens to our seas, birds are having to respond rapidly to climate change simply to survive," said Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB's conservation director.

"As often before, birds are acting like the canaries in a mine shaft and giving us early warning of dangerous change."

Global trend

The report shows that on average, chaffinches are laying nine days earlier than in the 1960s, and robins six days earlier.

Blue tits and great tits are among the other species displaying what scientists term a "phenological shift".

This response to rising temperatures has been documented in birds, insects, plants and mammals across a range of continents, and it is no surprise that the UK's birds should be changing their habits too.

In some species, the shift has been shown to be damaging, as it means key foods are no longer available when the youngsters need them.

But in other situations - as documented recently with English great tits - the wildlife appears to cope.

However, seabirds around the UK's northern shores have not been coping with drastic declines in prey such as sandeels in recent years, a consequence of industrial fishing and climate change.

This has brought abrupt local collapses of some colonies of species such as puffins and terns; but overall, the report shows, seabird numbers are still significantly higher nationwide than they were 30-40 years ago.

However, the UK is apparently losing other water birds including waders such as dunlins, ringed plovers and purple sandpipers.

Their numbers may actually be falling, perhaps through a climatic shift; or they may be wintering in other parts of Europe.

Source: BBC News Science/Nature website