Many species of birds around Chicago are nesting and laying eggs nearly a month earlier than they did 100 years ago, according to a new study by Field Museum researchers, who say they think climate change is why.
“We learned that birds in the Chicago region, at least some species, are nesting as much as 25 days earlier now than they were back in the early 1900s and late 1800s,” said John Bates, the museum’s curator of birds, who was the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. “This study was designed to basically look at whether or not bird species in the northeastern part of Illinois were changing their egg-laying dates over time.”
