Birds and Climatic Change

Climatic fluctuations must have influenced animals and plants, as they have done human history, since the earliest times; but it is only within the present century that such events have been documented. This survey draws together data on bird distribution changes thought to have been set in motion by the 'amelioration' which followed the 1890s, and postulates how some current trends in England and Scotland may have a basis in the subsequent expansion of the polar easterlies and the weakening circulation over the Atlantic Ocean. The importance of cooperative bird studies as an aid to monitoring climatic change is discussed.