Study: Many birds nesting, laying eggs earlier in Chicago

By TERESA CRAWFORD
Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Many species of birds are nesting and laying eggs nearly a month earlier than they did 100 years ago in the Chicago area. Researchers believe climate change is behind it. Those were among the findings in a new study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. Researchers compared recent observations with century-old eggs preserved in museum collections. John Bates is curator of birds at Chicago’s Field Museum and the study’s lead author. He says researchers learned that some bird species in the Chicago region are nesting as many as 25 days earlier now than they were in the early 1900s and late 1800s.