Submission + - Clues to Species Decline Buried in Pile of Bird Excrement (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: In 2009, while searching for ways to help endangered birds, research technician Chris Grooms heard that a chimney on his university campus used to host a migratory species known as the chimney swift. When he investigated, he found a pile of bird excrement 2 meters deep. The poop lay at the bottom of a five-story-high chimney and had been deposited over 48 years by the birds, which had roosted there until the top was capped in 1992. Now, Grooms and his colleagues have dug into that pile of guano, revealing new clues about why the chimney swift and other species like it have begun to disappear.
