African birds such as the orange bulbul, the Moorish swift or the spotted vulture colonize southern Spain; storks and swallows migrate less and less to Africa; the field goose remains in Europe and no longer reaches Andalusia, while mountain species such as the ptarmigan leave the lower areas. Millions of birds are changing their range and habits at the rate of climate change, involuntarily becoming prominent sentinels of the climate as they adapt to the new scenario. “It is the best known group of animals and by monitoring it we can know what is happening and where, because one of the engines that moves them is the climate and they settle in places that have been transformed into favorable habitats to live and breed”, explains Antonio- Román Muñoz, professor in the Department of Animal Biology at the University of Malaga.
These new living conditions imposed by global warming bring advantages and disadvantages. On a positive note, Juan Carlos del Moral, citizen science coordinator of the ornithology NGO SEO / BirdLife, points out that in the Euro-African migratory system, the one that passes through the Iberian Peninsula, “birds are beginning to winter further north , which prevents them from crossing the impressive barrier posed by the Sahara ”. The negative part focuses on the imbalances that occur when they are not able to adjust their life cycles (migration, reproduction …) to the early spring, which translates into population declines. These are some of the species that are modifying their habits.
The New African Settlers: The Spotted Vulture and the Moorish Swift
The spotted vulture is a newcomer to Europe. “For 20 years some juvenile specimens have been arriving to spend the summer and autumn and then they left, but now there are adults in Malaga, although we have not yet verified that they have bred,” says Muñoz. It is a matter of time before this ghoul with a wingspan of up to 2.5 meters – similar to the griffon vulture – reproduces itself in Spanish territory. “The species lives in the Sahel and is physiologically adapted to warmer temperatures, but an increase of a degree or a degree and a half may be behind the fact that several individuals have established themselves and remain among us all year long,” he adds.
The one that does reproduce already in the Peninsula is the Moorish swift. The first nest of this species was discovered in 2000 in the Sierra de la Plata (Cádiz) —curiously in a cave with the same name: that of the Moro— and it already extends outside the province. The same occurs with the orange bulbul, which nested in Tarifa for the first time in 2012. It is finding it difficult to make the leap outside that municipality, where it has become an attraction for ornithologists and fans from all over the world.
The next colonization, according to Muñoz, will be that of a much smaller bird, about 13 centimeters in length: the Saharan bunting. 20 years ago, the species had not reached the north of Rabat and now it breeds in Tangier and Ceuta; and this year it has been seen in the Iberian peninsula, on the front closest to Africa that ranges from the coast of Cádiz to Malaga.
Those that no longer migrate: storks and swallows
Species such as storks and swallows are imprinted in their DNA to migrate from Europe to the Sahel (Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria, mainly) to spend the winter. But if, thanks to the warming, they enjoy a milder climate in the countries of departure “why face this dangerous journey through the Sahara?”, Raises the biologist Del Moral. Their data corroborate this trend. In the seventies, the entire population of European storks wintered in Africa, but now 80% of adults in Spain and Central Europe do not leave the Peninsula or, at most, arrive in Morocco. The only ones that follow the tradition are the young specimens, until when they are four or five years old, they reach sexual maturity and stop doing so.
The dark swallows are less and less willing to take flight to Africa at the end of the summer to return to the Peninsula in the spring. “There is a very important fraction that is no longer leaving,” says Del Moral. And those that still migrate return earlier because spring is coming early, “which can cause them to die because there are no insects or it gets cold again and they do not have time to leave for warmer areas,” he adds. This species has suffered a 33% decline in the last decade.
Those that escape up the mountain: the ptarmigan
The future of the ptarmigan in the Pyrenees, where the southernmost population of Europe lives, is not rosy. At the moment it holds in the highest parts and the censuses that are carried out in Catalonia together with France in about 1,000 hectares and at altitudes of between 2,100 and 2,200 meters show that the populations remain stable. “But we know that it has disappeared from the peripheral massifs on both the north and south slopes,” says Diego Gacía, a technician from the Generalitat’s Fauna and Flora Service. One of the main problems that the species faces is the lack of snow, because the ptarmigan changes its plumage for a totally white one to camouflage itself and if the snowfall is delayed it becomes a traffic light in the middle of the mountain that calls shouting at raptors and other carnivores. The change in rainfall, increasingly intense and with hail in spring, has become another of its great obstacles by causing a greater mortality of chickens.
In other places of lower altitude such as the Sierras de las Nieves National Park (Málaga), the endangered redstart is found at higher and higher elevations and the black-headed warbler nests at 1,800 meters high, “something that did not happen in the past. 15 years, ”explains Muñoz. The danger in these mountains with a maximum elevation of 1,919 meters is that there will be a time when these species reach the top and when the habitat there is no longer favorable “they will disappear from that area and the population of redstart in this mountain range is the southernmost in the world ”. In Sierra Nevada, for example, with a maximum height of 3,479 meters, the species have a greater margin.
Those that no longer come and stay in Europe: the country goose
Of the country goose that spent the winter in Spain there is no trace. Until the fifties of the last century, it was quite common to see this goose in winter in some parts of the north of Spain. There were even more than common geese, SEO / BirdLife highlights. But the decline was relentless, until the population was reduced to the lagoons of Villafáfila (Zamora) where in the seventies some 5,000 specimens from northern Europe still passed: from Norway, Sweden, Finland, northern from Germany … But they didn’t hold out either. “The increasingly mild winters in these places encourage them to stay at home where they find food and do not have to fly for miles,” explains Del Moral. They are not the only ones, the regression of this type of birds is detected by the wetlands of Spain in winter. “It is noticeable in species such as the wigeon, the tufted porrón or the larks that spread through the fields to feed themselves,” says the expert.
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