Photic Niche Explains Avian Behavioral Responses to Solar Eclipses

Solar eclipses rapidly alter abiotic conditions and thus represent natural experiments for understanding how animals respond to ephemeral environmental change. Using a large acoustic dataset (181 species, 873 locations) from participatory science, we quantified how birds changed their vocalizations in response to the 2023 annular and 2024 total eclipses in North America. During the total eclipse, most species vocalized less, but nocturnal and large-eyed species vocalized more. The generalized quieting was restricted to locations with > 94% solar obscuration; most bird species vocalized more in locations with 70%-93% solar obscuration, which experienced only modest dimming. During the annular eclipse (which occurred during the nonbreeding season and reached a maximum of 90% obscuration), most birds did not change their vocalization behavior. Thus, changing photic conditions during solar eclipses are reflected in the composition of species vocalizing, leading to ephemeral shifts in ecological soundscapes.