Researchers: Artificial Light Screws Up Bird Sex Lives

Whether keeping the lights on or off when romance strikes is a matter of personal taste. But when it comes to birds, the scientific last word in that debate is that it's a definite mood-killer.

Researchers writing in Current Biology report that artificial night lighting played havoc with the mating behavior of common forest-breeding songbirds. For starters, the researchers observed that male blue tits living near street lights began chirping up to 10 minutes earlier than males living in the forest.

The presence of artificial light also affected females interested in hooking up with new mates. They found the males congregating near street lights to be more desirable. Indeed, those males had twice as good a chance of obtaining another mate than birds remaining in the dark of the forest. One other point of interest: Females near street lights began egg laying their eggs an average of 1.5 days earlier than their forest counterparts.