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Birds rest on a tree, while the moon is partially covered during a partial solar eclipse, which is visible from Lahore on October 25, 2022 from Lahore. | Credit: Arif Ali/AFP via Getty Images
During the entire solar eclipse of 2024, which attracted space lovers in North America, there was something going on with the birds.
Scientists documented an unexpected shift in the voice behavior of the birds during the solar eclipse using data from 344 community-based surveillance devices known as Haikuboxes. Researchers from Loggerhead Instruments, Inc. and the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacustics from Loggerhead Inc. and the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation managed to use these boxes in order to obtain clear evidence that birds reacted audibly to the heavenly event.
“Anecdotal evidence has long pointed out that birds stowed in night owls during a total solar eclipse or have night -time behaviors,” said David Mann, main author of the study and researcher at Loggerhead Instruments. “Our study shows that birds become calm during average during and shortly after all, but we have also learned that this behavior is strongly associated with the degree of darkness.”
The study is based on contributions from citizen scientists who organize acoustic surveillance devices at locations in the USA. These devices enable researchers to examine the behavior of wild animals in broad geographical areas with the help of artificial intelligence – and without the prejudices that are associated with the direct observation of humans.
“Our first, short look at Haikubox data, just a few hours after the solar eclipse, showed a great break -in of bird moods at the time of top authorization,” continued Mann. “When we dipped deeper into the data and removed all locations where people influenced the behavior of the birds, we found a much more complicated story.”
Man says the team has observed a number of bird reactions depending on the species and location. For example, black kackades were silent until well after its entirety in a place in New York, but increased the vocalizations during and shortly after the whole in a place in Vermont. American Robins continued to sang in Kentucky, while Pine Siskins completely fell silent during the solar eclipse in Maine.
“The variability of the bird responses and the difference in location was fascinating,” he said. “We really don’t know why birds had such different reactions to the overall darkness during the solar eclipse. Although we examined factors such as temperature, cloud cover and wind speed, we did not find a significant relationship to changes in the vocalization rates. This strongly indicates that the sudden overall darkness and the associated changes in the wind and the temperature were the main drivers of the observed behavioral displacements.”
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This work underlines the important role that Community Science plays and the potential to examine animals with minimal disturbance of their natural behavior. By using technology such as Haikuboxen, scientists can collect large amounts of data and collect knowledge that would be difficult or impossible to obtain through traditional methods.
“Our results can inform future research results about the effects of light pollution and sudden changes in the level of light on bird behavior,” said Mann. “In addition, if we combine the power of community science with clever technology, we can learn amazing things about wild animals without disturbing them what can influence future studies on continental scale.”
