Climate change | Giulia Masoero

Launching a Europe-wide survey of wildlife rescue centres

Fri, 15 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

📣 We are launching a Europe-wide survey of wildlife rescue centres to assess how heatwaves and extreme weather impact swift nestlings, using large-scale admission data.

In recent years, wildlife rescue centres have reported sudden spikes in the number of nestlings and fledglings admitted during heatwaves and other extreme events. These patterns remain poorly quantified at large spatial scales — and that is exactly where rescue centres can become unique allies for ecology and conservation.

The project focuses on the common swift (Apus apus), the pallid swift (Apus pallidus) and the Alpine swift (Tachymarptis melba). By combining rescue data with high-resolution climatic information, we aim to uncover the mechanisms linking extreme weather to mortality risk in young swifts — and to provide evidence-based recommendations for the conservation of breeding colonies.

If your centre collects data on swifts, please complete our short survey to help us map available data and build the network:

English | Italiano | Deutsch | Español | Français

Please help us by sharing the survey as widely as possible!

🔗 Full project description: Saving swifts, understanding climate.

✉️ Contact: giulia.masoero@vogelwarte.ch

Interview on Rai Radio3 Scienza

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0000

On 5 January 2026 I joined Rai Radio3 Scienza — the science show of Italian national public radio — to talk about climate change and Alpine swifts (Tachymarptis melba): how heatwaves and extreme weather affect nestlings, what long-term datasets are telling us, and why wildlife rescue centres are unexpectedly powerful allies in tracking these effects.

🎧 Listen to the full episode: Rai Radio3 Scienza, 05/01/2026 (in Italian).

If your wildlife rescue centre collects data on swifts, please consider joining the Saving swifts, understanding climate project — we are building a Europe-wide collaboration.

Not everyone is shrinking: Sand Martins are getting bigger

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Many bird species are getting smaller as the climate warms — but not all of them.

In our new paper in Ibis, Aldo Tamietti and I show that a Sand Martin (Riparia riparia) population breeding in northwestern Italy has, over more than two decades of standardised monitoring, increased in both body mass and wing length. This is the opposite of the widely reported “shrinking-bird” pattern.

The result reminds us that the global picture is built from very different local stories, and that long-term, standardised datasets — often maintained by ringers and small ornithological stations — are essential to tell those stories apart from noise.

🔗 Read the paper: Masoero & Tamietti (2025), Ibis, DOI 10.1111/ibi.70020.

Data and analysis scripts archived on the Open Science Framework.

Climate change | Giulia Masoero

Launching a Europe-wide survey of wildlife rescue centres

Take part — share the survey

Interview on Rai Radio3 Scienza

Not everyone is shrinking: Sand Martins are getting bigger