Why did the bird not cross the road? Noise, it seems, forms at least part of the explanation.
Christopher McClure, Jesse Barber and their colleagues at Boise State University in Idaho created a 'phantom road' to test the effects of traffic noise without any actual cars or disruptions in the visual landscape.
The authors played continuous traffic sounds through speakers spaced evenly along a 0.5-kilometre ridge for four days, followed by four days of silence. They monitored multiple sites along the fake road and in a control area every morning for 7.5 weeks.
When recordings played, the number of birds along the road declined by more than one-quarter. Two species, the cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum; pictured) and yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia), avoided the noisy road almost completely.
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Phantom road frightens birds. Nature 503, 315 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/503315b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/503315b