BIRDS appear to be social climbers. Our feathered friends have expensive tastes when it comes to deciding where to hang out, preferring parks in more upmarket neighbourhoods over the poorer parts of town.
The British government already uses local bird life as one of 15 indicators of the quality of life – the others are things like transport and recycling. But as well as being a barometer of a healthy environment, it seems that birds are also attracted to wealth.
Ann Kinzig and her team at Arizona State University studied 15 parks in Phoenix. They found that the more upmarket the…
