Did the Northern Lights bring out the song birds?

This month’s article was well underway when one particular event filled me with a new curiosity: The recent Aurora Borealis displays seemed to me to create some abnormal activity in our local bird population, and I really wanted to figure out why.

 

While diurnal birds can sing at any time, they generally sleep at night unless disturbed. One neighbor has recently lamented a mockingbird that has been belting out robust songs throughout the night and disturbing his sleep, but that is not uncommon for that species. This is especially true where there is a lot of evening light, like that created by our neighborhood’s very bright streetlights.

 

What is unusual is for a large number of diurnal species to be singing at 2:30 a.m. for no apparent reason. That is just what I encountered while on a fruitless walk, hoping to see the Northern Lights on the morning of May 11. And I just could not stop wondering if the geomagnetic disturbances were the cause of the excessive nocturnal singing. 

 

One recent Nature Notes article pointed out that animals don’t experience the geomagnetic spectrum the same way humans do. Specifically, birds can definitely see beyond the typical human visual range of 380-700 nanometers. This is what allows them, for example, to tell males from females in species that, to humans, appear identical. So we know that birds can see things we cannot see.

 

Additionally, it is well documented that many species of birds migrate at night and can do so even with cloudy skies and no view of the stars to guide them.

 

An October 2023 article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by multiple authors, states that there is “strong evidence that birds, sea turtles, and other organisms depend on magnetic information when making orientation decisions and developing navigational maps.” It continued to say that, using modern radar technology, migratory birds have been shown to be less likely to migrate at night during increased geomagnetic disturbances and that more of them experience navigational errors than normal when they do.

 

There is little scientific research available on whether events like those we recently experienced could increase birds waking and singing at abnormal times of day. It appears plausible, if not likely, given my recent encounter and birds’ additional awareness of and reliance on geomagnetic information.

 

I spend a healthy amount of time outdoors in the dark, and I have never heard anything even close to what I heard the other night. I have the Merlin Bird identification app on my phone, which has a listening feature, and it was lighting up constantly with new species. I only wish the app could include the “what” being said along with the “who” that is saying it.

 

Were our avian friends lamenting the level of electromagnetic activity, telling the kids not to leave the neighborhood, or simply admiring a natural display that, no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not see?

 

Maybe someday we’ll know.