Hello! Now carrying on with the topic on noise pollution, I have generally addressed what noise pollution is and I also talked about the noise pollution in Singapore. Today, I would like to talk about something more closely related to my course of study (Environmental Biology) which is noise pollution and its effects on wildlife, particularly birds.

Source: Wikipedia (Wolfgang Wander, 2007)

During these period of lockdown due to COVID-19, it was reported by behavioural ecologist Liz Derry Berry that the bird songs of white-crowned sparrows in the Bay Area of San Fransisco had improved in quality and efficiency (Arnold, 2020). This meant that these birds’ songs were ‘packed with more information’ and could travel ‘around twice as far’ as compared to before the pandemic (Arnold, 2020). This is because the noise pollution pre-pandemic arose from traffic in the area and other human activity. This made it difficult for these white-crowned sparrows to communicate with each other. In general, noise pollution forces birds to change the amplitude, frequency temporal structure and delivery timing of their calls (Berger-Tal, Wong, Candolin and Barber, 2019). In the case of the white-crowned sparrows, they needed to produce louder bird calls in order to make themselves be heard by other birds. You can have a listen to the song of these birds in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQQhJBR3FD8&ab_channel=GeoBeatsScience

Source: Youtube (GeoBeats Science, 2020)

In general, anthropogenic noise pollution can have multiple detrimental effects on birds in gaining information of their surroundings. Due to louder background noise, birds are unable to acquire information about their environment, putting them at a higher predation risk. Furthermore, it can also interfere with the signals essential for breeding success and parental care (Berger-Tal, Wong, Candolin and Barber, 2019).

Noise pollution can also affect migratory effects drastically. In a study that investigated the effects of traffic noise on distribution of birds, they created their own ‘phantom roads’ by using speakers to broadcast road noise into a roadless landscape to isolate the effects of traffic noise (McClure et al., 2013). The study shows that traffic noise does severely affect the abundance of birds in general. Migrating birds may be deterred by these traffic noises and will avoid these areas. Migratory stopovers are extremely essential for these migratory birds to stop for rest and for feeding. If these traffic areas are situated in migratory stopovers of these migratory birds, this could possibly lead to the increase in mortality amongst these birds and to the depletion of their populations (McClure et al., 2013).

In conclusion, noise pollution has vastly detrimental effects on the wildlife not only in our immediate vicinity but globally as well. Thank you for taking your time to read this and hope to see you back next blogpost!

Reference:

Arnold, C., 2020. When The Pandemic Quieted San Francisco, These Birds Could Hear Each Other Sing. [online] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/09/pandemic-san-francisco-birds-song-improved/. Available at: <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/09/pandemic-san-francisco-birds-song-improved/> .

Berger-Tal, O., Wong, B., Candolin, U. and Barber, J., 2019. What evidence exists on the effects of anthropogenic noise on acoustic communication in animals? A systematic map protocol. Environmental Evidence, [online] 8(S1). Available at: <https://environmentalevidencejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13750-019-0165-3#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20it%20has%20been,3%2C%2015%2C%2016%5D).>.

McClure, C., Ware, H., Carlisle, J., Kaltenecker, G. and Barber, J., 2013. An experimental investigation into the effects of traffic noise on distributions of birds: avoiding the phantom road. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280(1773), p.20132290.

Image and Videos:

GeoBeats Science, 2020. This Sparrow Changed Its Song During Covid-19 Lockdown. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQQhJBR3FD8&ab_channel=CNN>

Wolfgang Wander, 2007. White-Crowned Sparrow / (Zonotrichia Leucophrys).. [image] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-crowned_sparrow#/media/File:White-crowned-Sparrow.jpg>

Featured Image:

Thermos, 2006. Branta Leucopsis Migration. [image] Available at: <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BrantaLeucopsisMigration.jpg>.