Regular radar can't tell a flock of songbirds from a swarm of bugs, BirdCast helps discern the two by adding data from bird banding records acoustics, bird scan radar, and citizen scientists using a smartphone app.
The mutations in the songbird lineage must thus have happened after the Passeri and Tyranni lines diverged, but before the Passeri themselves began proliferating into their current variety.
But climate change is disrupting these natural rhythms worldwide, from songbird migration across North America to plankton growth cycles in Norway to a hillside of wildflowers in Missouri.
To find out if the special quality was more widespread in birds, the researchers sought the red-backed fairy wren, another species of Australian songbird.