Great Tits cope well with Global Warming!

Know anyone with Great Tits? This article is for them. (FYI)

Guest Post By Richard Black; Environment Correspondent, BBC News

At least one of Britain's birds appears to be coping well as climate change alters the availability of a key food. Researchers found that "Great Tits" are laying eggs earlier in the spring than they used to, keeping step with the earlier emergence of caterpillars.

Writing in the journal Science, they point out that the same "Tits" in the Netherlands have not managed to adjust. (Understanding why "Tits" in some places are affected more than others by climatic shifts is vital, they say.)

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) commented that other "Tits" are likely to fare much worse than the "Great Tits" as temperatures rise.

The research uses a long record of "Great Tits" in a breeding site at Wytham Woods near Oxford, where observations began in 1947. The finding is surprising in that the "Tits" are using the same old rules, but the rules still work

"We think it’s the longest running population study of wild animals anywhere in the world where animals are marked (ringed)," said Ben Sheldon of Oxford University, who led the new research. "The population contains about 400 breeding pairs, and between them they produce 2,000 or more offspring each year - so over the course of the study about 80,000 pair of "Tits" have been ringed and studied," he told BBC News.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://allans-perspective.blogspot.com