Artificial Light at Night Lowers Survival of Two Backyard Birds

Gray catbird (photo from Wikimedia) Northern house wren (photo from Wikimedia) 10 November 2026 Last week while I was learning about the effects of artificial night light on insects, I encountered sobering news about its effects on birds: For two backyard bird species, more light pollution is linked to lower survival. Published in July 2023, the study explains: We used 20 years of band-resight data collected as a part of the Neighborhood Nestwatch Program (NN) … at 242 sites in greater Washington, D.C. We estimated apparent survival and documented species-specific relationships with light and noise. Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) and [Northern] House Wren (Troglodytes aedon) survival decreased and American Robin (Turdus migratorius) survival increased with greater amounts of anthropogenic light. Anthropogenic noise had no relationship with apparent survival for any of the seven species. — Springer.com: Using citizen science data to investigate annual survival rates of resident…

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