Continent-Wide Patterns of Climate and Mast Seeding Entrain Boreal Bird Irruptions

Abstract

Avian irruptions are facultative, often periodic, migrations of thousands of birds outside of their resident range. Irruptive movements produce regional anomalies of abundance that oscillate over time, forming ecological dipoles (geographically disjunct regions of low and high abundance) at continental scales. Potential drivers of irruptions include climate and food variability, but these relationships are rarely tested over broad geographic scales. We used community science data on winter bird abundance (1989–2021) to identify spatiotemporal patterns of irruption for nine boreal birds across the United States and Canada and compared them to time series of winter climate and annual tree seed production. We hypothesized that, during irruption, bird abundance would decrease in regions experiencing colder winter climates (climate variability hypothesis) or low seed production resulting from the boom-and-bust of widespread mast-seeding patterns (resource variability hypothesis). Across all species, we detected latitudinal or longitudinal irruption modes, or both, demonstrating north–south and east–west migration dynamics across the northern United States and southern Canada. Seven of nine species displayed associations consistent with the climate variability hypothesis and six with the resource variability hypothesis. While irruption dynamics are likely entrained by multiple environmental drivers, future climate change could alter the spatial and temporal characteristics of avian irruption.