Finnish farmers are adapting to the warming climate by anticipating the time when they sow their fields in the spring. At the same time, birds have also advanced the time of breeding as the spring temperatures are becoming milder in response to climate change.
Finnish farmers are adapting to the warming climate by anticipating the time when they sow their fields in the spring. At the same time, birds have also advanced the time of breeding as the spring temperatures are becoming milder in response to climate change.
A new study shows that birds have shifted the time of their breeding much faster than the farmers are anticipating their sowing times in Finnish farmland. This means that more birds are nowadays laying their eggs on fields that are still to be sown, a mismatch in timing that is most likely fatal for the bird nests.
“As the eggs of curlew and lapwings are placed on unsown fields, they are likely to be run over by farming machinery during sowing operations even if farmers were willing to avoid nest destructions”, says researcher Andrea Santangeli from Finnish Museum of Natural History, which is part of University of Helsinki.
Read more at University of Helsinki
Image: This is a lapwing's nest on sowed field. (Credit: Andrea Santangeli)
