The Long Term Response of Birds to Climate Change: New Results from a Cold Stage Avifauna in Northern England

Abstract

The early MIS 3 (55–40 Kyr BP associated with Middle Palaeolithic archaeology) bird remains from Pin Hole, Creswell Crags, Derbyshire, England are analysed in the context of the new dating of the site’s stratigraphy. The analysis is restricted to the material from the early MIS 3 level of the cave because the upper fauna is now known to include Holocene material as well as that from the Late Glacial. The results of the analysis confirm the presence of the taxa, possibly unexpected for a Late Pleistocene glacial deposit including records such as Alpine swift, demoiselle crane and long-legged buzzard with southern and/or eastern distributions today. These taxa are accompanied by more expected ones such as willow ptarmigan /red grouse and rock ptarmigan living today in northern and montane areas. Finally, there are temperate taxa normally requiring trees for nesting such as wood pigeon and grey heron. Therefore, the result of the analysis is that the avifauna of early MIS 3 in England included taxa whose ranges today do not overlap making it a non-analogue community similar to the many steppe-tundra mammalian faunas of the time. The inclusion of more temperate and woodland taxa is discussed in the light that parts of northern Europe may have acted as cryptic northern refugia for some such taxa during the last glacial. These records showing former ranges of taxa are considered in the light of modern phylogeographic studies as these often assume former ranges without considering the fossil record of those taxa. In addition to the anomalous combination of taxa during MIS 3 living in Derbyshire, the individuals of a number of the taxa are different in size and shape to members of the species today probably due to the high carrying capacity of the steppe-tundra.

Birds on the move in the face of climate change: High species turnover in northern Europe

“…In our work, we observed that species turnover is high, which also means that structure of bird communities is changing and totally new community composition may evolve. Interestingly, records from Glacial period in Northern England (55–40 kyr before present, Stewart & Jacobi, ) showed that there were both northern (such as willow ptarmigan/red grouse Lagopus lagopus, and rock ptarmigan L. muta ), southern alpine (such as Alpine swift Tachymarptis melba ), and eastern steppe bird species present (such as demoiselle crane Grus virgo and long‐legged buzzard Buteo rufinus ) at the same site. Currently, these species do not have overlapping ranges, thus these ancient bird communities were nonanalogous to any present bird communities.…”

Identifying Bird Remains Using Ancient DNA Barcoding

“…The main discrepancy between the morphological identifications and that from the ancient DNA analyses is the shorelark formerly identified as a wood lark. Wood lark may not have been out of the realms of possibility, because although its range today is that of a temperate bird [ 24 ], species with similar distributions are known from the last glacial in Britain in what have been described as non-analogue communities [ 25 ]. However, shorelark is a bird breeding in the tundra of the Palaearctic today, and this fits well with a Late Glacial age accompanying birds like the here-identified fieldfare and commonly associated taxa such as rock ptarmigan and the Norwegian lemming.…”

An elusive ghost: Searching for the Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) in the past of Britain

“…Findings of Eagle Owl bones from paleontological and archaeological sites, though not many (11 sites at the most), indicate a long presence of the Eagle Owl in the Pleistocene of Britain. Occurrences are recorded at 11 sites, 12 if we also consider the Middle Palaeolithic find from Pin Hole Cave (Derbyshire), which could only be identified at the genus level (Stewart & Jacobi, 2015). These span both glacial and interglacial periods and cover at least 700,000 years (Stewart, 2007, p. 483).…”