Wildfires

Wildfires Affect Migrating Birds

Four radio-collared Tule geese left their summer breeding grounds near Alaska’s Cook Inlet in the fall of 2020 to head south for the winter. The migration typically takes about four days: The birds fly over the Gulf of Alaska, stay about 100 miles offshore from Canada and skirt Vancouver Island. They stop briefly to float and rest on the Pacific Ocean a handful of times and then gather en masse at Summer Lake in central Oregon before making the final push to California’s Sacramento Valley. Last summer, however, the migrating birds encountered dense wildfire smoke off the coast of British Columbia and over Washington — and that’s when their behavior got weird.

One bird backtracked north almost 80 miles. Two spent nearly four days floating on the ocean before trying to head inland again; they ended up flying directly at the Beachie Creek Fire in Oregon and then climbing almost four times higher than usual to get over the huge plume of smoke. A fourth bird got turned around and headed much farther east than normal, all the way to Idaho. Tule geese typically prefer to overnight at wetlands, but these four stopped in bizarre locations instead, even landing once on the side of Mount Hood.

The birds’ 2020 migration took twice as long as the 2019 migration — nine days versus four — and they flew an additional 470 miles, all to avoid wildfire smoke.

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