One of my favorite parts of Spring is the increase in birds waking up with me in the early hours. It's nice to know someone else is up at the crack of dawn, and there's something incredibly comforting about their spring chirping.
Those of you waking up in Britain may have a little less chirping to listen to this season, however; a new article from The Guardian warns that the number of cuckoos, nightingales and turtle doves have fallen drastically in the last couple of years around that area – and nobody knows why.
All three species are migrant birds who return to Africa when it gets cold, so scientists are trying to figure out if the problem is related to either continent, or both.
According to The Guardian, the numbers of these migrant birds "have declined dramatically in the UK since 1995. For turtle doves the figure is 71%; nightingales, 53%; and cuckoos, 44%." A spokesperson for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds calls the decline "very significant and very worrying."
The weird part is that although the situation is being looked into, no one knows why it's happening. Climate change might be to blame, changes in Britain's farmland might be to blame, or an increasing population and habitat damage in Africa could be to blame – the answers just aren't there.
Is it just me, or have there been a lot of "dramatic" drop-offs in animal life (bees, birds, fish...) that have been discovered this year with no real answers as to why they're happening? Kinda freaky when you think too hard about it...
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