On a hazy day in June 2023, doctoral students Trifosa Simamora and Timothy Boycott noticed that the birds at their field site had gone quiet. Now in a study published in Biological Conservation, they show that the culprit was smoke from that summer's record-breaking Canadian wildfires. The smoke dampened the songs and vocalizations of multiple species, with a particularly negative effect on already imperiled grassland birds and birds with ranges specific to the eastern U.S. The reduced communica...