CHICAGO -- Some Chicago birds are nesting nearly a month earlier than they did more than a century ago. And like some other shifts happening around the Great Lakes region as temperatures rise and the timing of the natural world drifts, there’s a familiar driver: climate change.
That’s according to a new study from local researchers published in the Journal of Animal Ecology — and thanks to some eggs more than 100 years old.
As plants, animals and insects adapt to warmer and wetter conditions in Illinois, birds are also responding to a changing climate, researchers found. About a third of the 72 bird species included in the study have started laying eggs on average 25 days earlier than they did more than 100 years ago.
