Robins Extremely Sensitive To Artificial Light

A new study being undertaken by Glasgow University is hoping to understand why robins stay up all night singing in cities. According to Dr. Davide Dominoni, the reason why they do this could be because the city lights make the robins believe there is no end to the day. If that does end up being the case,  Dr. Dominoni is recommending we reduce the amount of light pollution we emit at night.

Artificial lighting causes disruption to body clocks

The robin is specifically adapted to hunting insects under conditions of dim lighting which suggests that they are probably extremely susceptible to the impact of artificial lighting. Dr. Dominoni reckons that blue light from neon signs probably cause a lot of disruption to the body clock of this species of bird. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting, in San Jose, California, Dr. Dominoni said living in Glasgow he has heard robins singing at all times of day and night and he believes they are one of the most sensitive species to light.

There are other possible reasons

In order to test his hypothesis, Dr. Dominoni is placing cameras in the nesting boxes of birds to see exactly when they sleep. Artificial light is not the only reason put forward to explain nocturnal singing. Other researchers have suggested that birds like to sing at night in urban areas largely because during the day it is simply too noisy. Regardless of what the real reason may be, Dr. Dominoni believes that signing throughout the night could have some adverse impact on the birds.

“This brings us to some of the physiological costs that that these environmental pressures might have. Singing is a costly behaviour, it takes energy. So by increasing their song output, there might be some energetic costs. I think we should reduce the intensity of the light we put out, reduce the amount of light and try to think about the spectrum of the light we are putting out. In some cases, we can try to modify the street lamps, by putting shields on top to reduce light pollution.”