Question

SCIENCE 10 EASY CLIMATE QUESTION

Every spring, a club of bird watchers record the first sighting of the migratory golden-crowned kinglet. The graph shows the observations over a span of three decades.
Describe the trend indicated by the graph. (1 mark)
Provide a hypothesis to explain the trend. (2 marks)

Answer 1

the sightings start appearing earlier and earlier each year. my hypothesis is that this, unfortunately, is somehow the work of humans, destroying the bird's habitats or scaring them off somehow...

Answer 2

The graph shows that Golden Crowned Kinglets have been spotted sooner every year, and it appears to be a stable rate.

It could be due to several reasons, but a good hypothesis is that the Golden Crowned Kinglets is a migratory bird and because of climate change, they are starting to migrate sooner.

Step-by-step explanation:

The graph shows us that in the 70's the Golden Crowned Kinglets were usually spotted around mid May. However in the early 2000's, they were seen as soon as late April or Early May. While the change may not seem so drastic, the birds have been spotted sooner and sooner at a very stable rate, indicating that the birds will continue to show up sooner.

Without information on the bird's habits it's hard to provide a good hypothesis, but since we are recording the first sighting in spring, we can reasonably assume that the Golden Crowned Kinglet is a migratory bird, who arrives in the spring. Since climate change has been increasing temperatures in some places and decreasing them in others, it's possible that the birds are receiving environmental signals to migrate sooner and sooner.