Do Electronics Send Birds Astray?

Electromagnetic ‘noise’ can disrupt migratory birds’ navigation, study says

For decades, scientists have known that migratory birds rely on the Earth’s magnetic field as one way to help orient themselves and fly the right direction.

But researchers in Germany have documented for the first time that the electromagnetic “noise” produced by modern societies could cause those avian navigation systems to go haywire, according to findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
. . .
Mouritsen and his colleagues stumbled upon the startling findings by chance, and the conclusions were seven years in the making.

European Robin

Years ago, they were trying to conduct a basic, often-repeated experiment in which European robins are placed in an enclosed, funnel-shaped container lined with scratch-sensitive paper during the migration season. Even inside a cage, without visual cues, the birds typically orient themselves using their internal compasses and scratch in the appropriate direction of migration.

But again and again, the birds in Oldenburg could not seem to orient themselves, Mouritsen said. Only when researchers covered the small wooden huts with metal screening and connected it to a grounding wire, blocking man-made electromagnetic noise, did the birds go in the right direction again.

“It’s significant, because we found a very clear, repeatable effect of electromagnetic noise made by electrical equipment that prevents a bird, in this case a European robin, from using its magnetic compass,” Mouritsen said.

What elements of our electronics heavy society is responsible for the noise that's discombobulating the birds electromagnetic navigation system?

He said relatively minor levels of electromagnetic activity, with an intensity 1,000 times below limits laid out by the World Health Organization, appeared to be enough to disrupt the birds. The interference that switched off the birds’ internal compasses did not appear to come from cellphone signals or power lines, as their frequencies were either too low or too high. Rather, signals in the range of AM radio stations or fields generated by other electronic equipment are more likely to blame, although researchers have not pinpointed the precise cause.

That wasn't much help.  Do we need to start putting Faraday cages around all our electronics, except for the ones designed to broadcast bird safe signals?

“The levels of radio-frequency radiation that affected the bird’s orientation are substantially below anything previously thought to be biophysically plausible, and far below levels recognized as affecting human health,” Joseph L. Kirschvink, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, wrote in an essay accompanying Wednesday’s study in Nature.

I've featured at least three birds one this blog recently that were transients on their way north; Semipalmated Sandpipers, Lesser Sandpapers, and the Rose Breasted Grosbeak.  To my knowledge, there isn't a great deal of evidence suggesting that large numbers of migrating birds are wandering off their migration paths as a consequence of stray electromagnetism, but birds do, with some frequency, show up in unexpected places, giving serious bird watchers a thrill. I don't think it's a problem needing a solution just yet though.