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Speaker 1 00:00:04 If you're a wood duck, migrating hundreds of miles might be something you're used to, but you still probably wanna take a break every once in a while. And the crystal blue banks of lake Michigan might seem like the perfect place to do just that. That is until you mistake a windows reflection for the actual lake, hit the window, full speed and then die. This is the case for mini Chicago and Evanston resident and migratory birds. This past weekend, over a hundred million birds were predicted to be migrating at night in the United States and over all of spring migration from March to June billions of birds, my, of great across north America and the course of migration are just flying around over 600 million birds die in the us each year from collisions. Chicago was the worst ranked city for bird collisions in the entire nation.
Speaker 3 00:00:52 Well, I'd always heard that there were these instances of people reporting birds that were hitting windows in downtown Chicago, and it was, and it seemed like this dire problem, nobody really had a solution for, and maybe a lot of people just considered it collateral damage and that, you know, what are you gonna do about this?
Speaker 1 00:01:08 That's Annette prince director of the Chicago bird collision monitors
Speaker 3 00:01:12 Really I'm interested in it because, uh, I think birds are, are wonderful. And I'm very dismayed that when they travel through our area, they're in so much danger. And even though I can't, uh, protect some of the habitat loss that they're experiencing, it's, it's just as vital that during their passages between north and south, we give them safe, safe passages. We can do things that improve their ability to, to survive. What is, uh, a marathon, uh, an amazing journey that they make every year
Speaker 1 00:01:39 Chicago's known for its beautiful architecture. Just walk by this Chicago river and listen to an architecture tour, host telling dozens of people on their boat. But many buildings in Chicago have massive windows. These may look appealing to us, but especially when combined with bright lighting at night and their location along migratory paths, they can be detrimental to birds, but the bird deaths don't stop in Chicago on Northwestern's campus. Several buildings are particularly problematic for birds
Speaker 3 00:02:06 At, at one point back in, in 2017, people really made a push about the fact that, you know, they'd been asking for years for Northwestern to do something and, and reporting the casualties. And there was a very receptive person who was in community relations at Northwestern at that point, who was really open to retrofitting one of the buildings on campus, which is the Francis Sur building. And, uh, after retrofitting that it opened the opportunity to both show how by monitoring that building after they added the window film, how it was a significant decrease we had in bird strikes. If you had to pick the top three buildings that we had the most concern about, it would be, uh, the Kellogg global, the Ryan athletic center and the mud library,
Speaker 1 00:02:48 Since these buildings are already built and are used frequently in promotional material, it seems unlikely that they could be altered substantially for the sake of birds, but there are still many precautions that can be, and have been put in place to try to mitigate the illusionistic effects of windows and lights.
Speaker 3 00:03:03 Uh, the Kellogg global hub, even though they have done some mitigation on that building, they added window film onto the east side of it, which is the place where birds are both seeing a, a deadly reflection or a transparency in that glass of a whole, you know, green spa base that is, um, adjacent to the east side of that building. And by adding the retrofitting, the, the number of strikes on that side has been maybe cut in half, but still, you know, from a hundred birds killed. Now it's 50 still, still, you know, it's a building that has so much glass. There's just so many areas that now that it's our already up, trying to find ways to cover or protect or change all that glass is a, is a, is a very challenging task.
Speaker 1 00:03:47 Still, there are more precautions that could be taken, including with lighting.
Speaker 3 00:03:51 Lighting can be very dangerous. And we have seen that buildings that leave the shades up and lights on, uh, have an increased number of bird strikes. The, the Ryan athletic center, uh, which kind of comes in number three, that if they leave their lighting on it's, it's almost like a lighthouse beacon that can be very dangerous. As far as drawing birds in to begin with light seems to attract birds from their migratory path. They're already navigating and orienting themselves by the stars in the moon. They use light in different ways to, um, to fall their way when they're, when they're flying. We've seen them be drawn miles away from where they were normally flying to come towards that light in a disoriented way that then brings in the opportunity or the, the misfortune to come to encounter the glass that's in that building.
Speaker 1 00:04:34 According to prints, even with protection and place. And the improvements that have been observed birds of, of all sizes are still in danger from these architectural trends.
Speaker 3 00:04:44 We've really seen everything, including endangered species. We had a least bitter that hit, uh, the Kellogg building. I think it was last year. The, the lakefront campus is such an inviting place. It's, it's, it's a, it's a nice habitat. It's a green space that birds that have been flying all night, which is what these, the majority of these migratory birds are doing is they're coming off of a path that was following the lakefront and a campus like Northwestern, uh, looks very inviting. It's almost an obligation. If you have buildings next to the, the sort of very inviting habitat to try to do something, to, to make sure that the birds that encounter them, aren't gonna face additional danger. And when I, I see the fact that someone either has a rescued something and brought it to me, or, or they've seen me rescuing something and they, they get an appreciation for how important this issue is and how, um, what, what a big difference.
Speaker 3 00:05:31 Some simple things like turning, uh, turning some lights out, drawing. Some drapes, seeing PE seeing that register for people is, is, is meaningful to me. If a building was killing 10 people a year, we'd be making sure that changed its ways. Uh, we might have to close that building down. We that, which wouldn't be acceptable, but some buildings killing hundreds of thousands of birds, uh, is either looked at as collateral damage or something. That is what are you gonna do about it? Uh, and the fact that we have ways to do something about it, we have the power to, to change that it's not a, a hopeless or confusing problem because in some way, some, some of the environmental issues in this world are very complex. And it's really hard to, to know all the weight, all the things we have to do to fix them. And we, we, we have a lot of good strategies for, for fixing the buildings. If
Speaker 1 00:06:14 You do find an injured bird, you can put bird into a paper bag or for larger birds, wait with them. While calling the Chicago bird collision monitors hotline at 7 7 3 9 8 8 1 8 6 7.
Speaker 3 00:06:27 You really should care that that our environment could crash. If these birds are no longer part of, of a vital chain of life, that controls insects, pollens plants, um, it, that that we rely on, whether we're aware of or fond of birds at all, they, they're so critical to, to us surviving and going on need to protect these birds for their sake and for our own sake
Speaker 1 00:06:49 For WNU R news, I'm Helen Bradshaw.
