Metro Denver is not just packed with commuters, craft breweries, and transplants from everywhere. It is also a major layover for landbirds coursing across the continent, according to a new nationwide study that puts the metro area squarely on the migration map.
Researchers say city parks, street trees, and even backyard gardens are pulling serious weight as refueling and resting stations for birds on the move. Those everyday bits of green, it turns out, function as links in a migration network that stretches across the hemisphere.
Study at a glance
The findings come from a paper in Nature Cities, which used weather surveillance radar to estimate stopover activity across 2,130 parks in 88 urban areas around the United States.
The authors report that nearly half of migration hot spots fall inside Metropolitan Statistical Areas, 48 percent in spring and 44 percent in fall. They also found that the relationship between cities and stopover activity shifts by region, trending positive in western flyways and negative in the east. Those patterns held even after the team accounted for landscape and social variables.
Why Denver shows up on migration maps
Lead author Miguel “Mikko” Jimenez began the project as a doctoral student at Colorado State University and now works as a researcher at Lincoln Park Zoo. He told KUNC that western cities such as Denver tend to concentrate the water and green habitat that migrants desperately need during long flights…