Trends in Early Spring Arrival Dates Among Migratory Birds

 

Don Jude Codipilly, Verrazzano Class of 2026, completed a major in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Variations in the spring arrival dates among various migratory birds have been a topic of great interest among ornithologists and amateur bird watchers alike. Over the course of several decades, multiple taxa have been observed to exhibit a negative trend in their spring arrival dates, resulting in earlier arrival. The data we have compiled from The Kingbird between 1987 and 2025 directly support this claim, as the average arrival dates of 93 different species across 10 regions in New York state presented a negative slope and p-value <0.05, rejecting the null hypothesis of there being no significant variation in arrival dates. Ultimately, the change in arrival dates provides an important insight into how these species may be impacted by various climatic or environmental alterations, suggesting that further research into understanding shifts in migration patterns could prove to be of value.

This project was something suggested to me by my mentor Shaibal Mitra and is something that I felt rather passionate about as he had introduced me to the world of bird watching allowing me to gain a newfound interest in the birds present not only across the state by my own backyard. I expected this capstone project to be rather overwhelming but, in the end, I found myself greatly enjoying the process and the subject matter. It was initially challenging dealing with such a large data set but understanding exactly what was needed for this research certainly made the whole process easier to understand, and after doing the analysis I found myself rather surprised in that so many species are arriving to New York early in the Spring. After graduating I am looking to continue this research project as there’s is still so much to do and further analyze with the data set we have, the overall take away I have with this research is the importance of doing this kind of work to understand how these species can be influences by factors that we as humans may very well be linked to.