Changes in red-winged blackbird population reflect climatology
By Greg Kline
Sunday November 26, 2006
Heather Coit
University of Illinois Professor Pat Weatherhead holds a red-winged blackbird dummy inhis office at Shelford Vivarium in Champaign.
Climate change might be reducing the population of red-winged blackbirds and also increasing the ratio of females to males produced by the birds.
At a research station in Ontario, Canada, where University of Illinois Professor Patrick Weatherhead has studied the blackbirds for the past quarter century, the bird's breeding population has dropped dramatically by 50 percent in recent decades, a decline apparently related to weather trends as far south as the Southeastern United States.
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