https://e360.yale.edu/features/bird-window-collisions
"Most early mornings in the spring and fall, as he has done for more than four
decades, David Willard goes out to gather the dead. A retired curator of birds
at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, Willard walks the mile from his
office, in the dark, to pick up the thrushes, warblers, sparrows, and other
migrating birds that have met their end against the glass walls of McCormick
Place, a giant modernist rectangle on the Lake Michigan shore. The dead birds
go into a plastic grocery bag. Those that are stunned but still alive he slips
into a paper sandwich bag, to be released later in the brush on a nearby hill.
Originally built in 1960 in a city park, McCormick Place is the largest
convention center in North America. Thanks to the diligence of Willard and his
colleagues, it has also earned a wide reputation as a killer of birds. On a
good day during migration season, he might find half a dozen dead birds; on a
bad day, maybe 100. Earlier this month, a rare combination of weather and
migratory patterns brought clouds of birds flying down the Lake Michigan shore.
Willard found 966 dead at McCormick Place, mostly warblers. Nearly 100 others
had hit the building but were still alive. “It was scary,” Willard said.
Bird collisions are a growing problem in the United States — and the world
over. Four years ago, scientists reported that the number of birds in North
America had declined by nearly 3 billion, or almost 30 percent, over the
previous half century. Scientists say one obvious cause is habitat loss; a less
obvious cause is our modern obsession with glass walls and windows. According
to estimates published in the journal
The Condor in 2014, building collisions
kill hundreds of millions of birds each year in the U.S. and reduce the total
number of birds by 2 to 9 percent. In Chinese cities, where glass buildings
have also proliferated, scientists noted in a recent letter to Science, bird
collisions “are now an important global factor in bird mortality.”
At the same time, there are growing efforts across the U.S. and Canada to
reduce collisions and make cities more bird friendly. Businesses in more and
more cities are taking part in “lights out” programs that ask building managers
to dim lights during spring and fall migrations. Architects are designing
buildings that reduce bird collisions, sometimes by using glass that birds can
see and avoid. And more and more communities — from big cities like New York to
smaller communities like Lake County, Illinois — are adopting ordinances that
require bird friendly glass in new construction."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-women-rights-france-ntds-africa-bears-europe/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
