Birds try to adapt as suburbs replace forests

University of Washington researchers have found that development brings not necessarily extinction to native bird species, but replacement with new native species colonizing the suburban environments that used to be forests.

By Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times staff reporter

A killdeer picks its way along the beauty bark in the landscaping strip that wraps this stormwater-management pond, so new it still bears the ridges of bulldozer tracks. Mallards flap up from the landscaping fabric.

They are brave colonizers of a new environment that was a forest just last year. Across Puget Sound, landscapes are being transformed by development, and bird populations are changing along with them, University of Washington researchers have learned.

By tracking 27 research plots on the suburban fringe of King and Snohomish counties over eight years, researchers found development brings not necessarily extinction but replacement, with new native species colonizing the suburban environments that used to be forests.

Researchers did something no one in this region has done before: They looked not only at local bird populations, but also at which birds were surviving and reproducing over time, leading to a change in the structure of the local bird community.

"It's a change in who's top," said biologist John Marzluff, who led the study.

Spreading suburbs lure birds of a different feather

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