By Susan Milius
Pied flycatcher numbers are crashing in places where climate change has knocked the birds’ spring migration out of sync with the food bonanza on the breeding ground.
That’s the conclusion from a study of nine breeding areas in the Netherlands, says Christiaan Both of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Heteren. Each spring, the pied flycatchers arrive there after traveling 4,500 kilometers from Africa, cued mostly by day length.