everyone is a birder
Sample bag in one hand, protocol clip board in the other, I circle the building. It’s day five, and I’m happy to have no noteworthy findings like I did on day one.
Six feet from the building, I duck under branches and peek under bushes. On top of vegetation, through it. I look carefully so to not miss one.
I’m looking for dead birds.
As bird enthusiasts, we at the NCBT love when we have the chance to participate in something that can promote education and conservation.
Every year during spring and fall migration, the Birding Trail participates in a Bird Collision Survey. Our role is to take two daily laps around the NC Wildlife Resources Commission HQ building, searching for any birds that have died from window collisions.
If we find one, we carefully take three photos of it, document it in iNaturalist (where and when it was found, by whom, and what species it is). The bird is then collected so it can be taken to the NC Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh, where it’s used for educational purposes.
So how does this survey help conservation? Well, if we take data on where birds hit windows, when they hit windows, and even which species hit windows, it can help us better understand what we can do to prevent collisions.
It’s a tricky issue. This year’s spring survey is a perfect example. During our month of surveying, we only found one dead bird at NC WRC. Meanwhile, just down the road, the Toxicology building on NC State’s campus gets several collisions a month due to the tunnel of trees at the entrance that leads down to a wall of windows. Our surveying can help us figure out what structural factors might be impacting such drastic differences in collision numbers.
Window collisions is the third leading cause of death for birds (habitat loss and cats being the first and second causes). Up to one billion of birds die each year from it [see the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) site].
And bird population decline is significant. It’s recently been found that the global population of birds has gone down almost three billion birds since 1970. That’s one in four birds, gone. This decline cannot be reversed or even slowed without some action, and considering the role that many of these major contributors—including window collisions—play in this issue. (You can read about other ways to bring birds back at 3BillionBirds.org).
Collision causes are not entirely certain. But the prediction is that birds are primarily hitting windows due to one of two reasons:
Have you ever used a window as a mirror? Likely many times. We know it’s a window, but birds who are flying quickly towards them often don’t. Trees reflected in the glass resemble more habitat, causing high speed collisions.
Birds that migrate at night are used to darkness when they travel. City lights are dense in comparison to this rural darkness. When migratory birds encounter cities and suburbs on their flyways, the lights can cause disorientation, causing them to collide into buildings. A devastating example of this occurred during the Fall 2019 migration season when hundreds of Chimney Swifts collided into the NASCAR Hall of Fame (you can read more about this here).
….But windows are everywhere. Can we actually solve this problem?
The ABC has been conducting safe tests to help determine the effectiveness of various collision prevention methods. You can read more about these here.
You can try some of these methods that, according to the tests, appear to reduce window collisions. Thankfully, we can individually implement many of these in our own homes, and they are quite inexpensive.
Since the problem is confusion in birds, we can help birds by making windows more recognizable and cutting down on disorienting sensory outputs.
Try sticking things to your windows to help birds perceive the glass. This can be done with:
All of these fixes are very inexpensive and can even be fun DIY projects. Place items on windows close enough to each other where a bird would see it as not an open space that is free to be flown through. You can get more information on this solution here.
Now, cutting down on disorienting lights for night migrators is certainly more challenging, but commitment from many can go along way. Here’s what you can do:
During migration season (March-May and August-October), consider dimming your lights at night.
Sure, it seems like one home with dim lights won’t make much of a difference in helping birds, but as awareness grows, so does the positive impact.
Cities around the country are already demonstrating that light pollution can be reduced by community action. For instance, Atlanta Audubon initiates a seasonal “Lights Out Atlanta” campaign during migration, encouraging the whole city to cut down their light use at night to help birds. The noteworthy impact of this movement can be found here.
This can be done in your community as well. Every building with less light is playing a role in reducing disorientating inputs for birds.
With window collisions, the bird is often just stunned, so the best thing to do is often to leave it in a safe place, like under a bush, until it recovers. Wild birds see people as predators, so handling the bird or waiting with it can cause it more stress and may hurt its ability to recover quickly. So the best thing to do if you leave it somewhere safe is to check on it in thirty minutes to an hour to see if it’s back on its feet.
You can also call a licensed wildlife rehabilitator that specifies in birds. A complete and updated list can be found here.
Or you can call the NC Wildlife Helpline at 866-318-2401 or email wildlifehelpline@ncwildlife.org to speak to a wildlife biologist from 8am-5pm Monday through Friday.
Note that if you choose these options, the expert you speak to may or may not be nearby, but they can likely give you advice for what you should do in your given situation.
Unfortunately, sometimes the only option is to ‘let nature take its course’. The best thing you can do then is to work to prevent window collisions in the future.
I was happy to only find one bird in our protocol this year. This could be because of a number of factors from the helpful presence of decals on many of our windows, to the location of our building, to the way the light hits the glass. But we did find one Blue Jay. I wanted to share his photo with you to invite you in on this survey process (shown at the top).
The Blue Jay will not only be serving a role in our museum, but also here online. We can help prevent similar collisions by taking action in our own homes and also by spreading awareness, encouraging others—and our communities—to do the same.