Birds treated city dwellers to more visits during pandemic lockdowns, study suggests

Warblers, hummingbirds, hawks and other migratory birds across Canada and the U.S. hung out in cities during the pandemic lockdowns in the spring of 2020, treating urban-dwelling humans to far more visits than usual, a new study finds.

Birding is a hobby that surged in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. And many birders logged the species they sighted, and their locations, through “citizen science” apps such as eBird that allow data gathered by volunteers to be used by scientists for conservation research.

The new study by Canadian and U.S. researchers compared birders’ observations on eBird between March and May in the three years before the pandemic to those