His team wondered what they might outside the breeding season. Most past research also focused on birds’ breeding seasons, he said, but that’s a pretty short period of time. While past research looked only at light pollution or sound pollution, Francis wanted to look at them both together. With their hands on large citizen science datasets, Francis and his colleagues wondered if they could use the data to find out more about how noise and light pollution may impact birds.
In fact, Clinton Francis, an associate professor at California Polytechnic State University, conducted research in the past showing that hearing birds singing could increase people’s well-being. People use feeders in their backyards to develop a closer connection with nature. Birds tend to stay away from people’s backyard when it’s noisy-and even more when there’s also artificial light around.
