Kate McFarland

I had originally planned to write an article for Song Sparrow on the importance of the Native Plant Backyard Challenge, which begins this month. I had planned to invoke relevant new research, notably a October 2021 report by the USDA Forest Service, which found that urban and suburban homeowners can help to increase bird diversity

A recently released study concludes that diversity of bird species is associated with higher life satisfaction. The study, published in Ecological Economics, is the first continent-wide analysis of the impact of biodiversity on subjective well-being. The authors compare bird data from the European Breeding Bird Atlas to life-satisfaction ratings from over 26,000 individuals from 26

A large-scale study recently published in Global Change Biology investigates how different species of birds respond to extreme weather events such as heat waves and drought, the types of events that are predicted to occur with increasing frequency and severity due to climate change. The authors found that common birds are better able to withstand

How the Lockdown Helped to Expose the Effects of Noise Pollution on Birdsong In last month’s Song Sparrow, I wrote about the impact of light pollution on birds. Just as artificial light can disrupt the behavior and biological processes of birds, so too can human-caused noise. This fact has recently been highlighted by research conducted