Male birds’ feathers become duller when wildfires burn their habitats

All fire and no rain makes fairywrens very dull birds. As the climate warms and wildfires become increasingly common, these birds are coping by ditching their bright plumage to better blend in with the burnt landscape.

Jordan Boersma at Washington State University in Pullman was studying the physiology of the red-backed fairywren (Malurus melanocephalus), an energetic little bird native to the grasslands of northern and eastern Australia, when he and his team made this discovery.

“I was in the middle of another experiment when this wildfire came through and burned up all…