By Tony Gazso, Interpretive Naturalist

Fall migration is now in full swing. As you may have read in a previous post, it’s an exciting time for birders. It’s not, however, necessarily an exciting time for the birds themselves. Migration is a long and arduous journey. Some birds travel thousands of miles over the course of only a couple of weeks, while a few even travel over open ocean straight from New York to South America! Things like storms, predators, and insufficient food sources are all potentially deadly obstacles migrating birds must contend with. Another, arguably worse, obstacle is us. Human development has caused some pretty major issues for birds on their journeys, none more so than our many, many windows. Window strikes are responsible for as many as one billion bird fatalities every year–that's a lot of our feathered friends that aren’t making it home!
 
Birds have no concept of what a window is, and the habitat and sky reflected just looks like a safe place to fly toward. This leaves birds hitting windows at full speed. There are, however, ways we can help reduce these impacts. During the day, window decals can help; they reflect UV light that is visible to birds, but not to us. Screens on the outside of windows and rope curtains are also good options, but what about at night?

injured Northern parula

Most birds actually migrate overnight, using stars to help in their navigation. As birds approach larger cities, the light from the skyscrapers confuses them. Drowning out the light of the stars, disoriented birds end up flying right into windows, or circle the buildings until they’re too exhausted to fly. Thanks to programs like Lights Out, more and more cities, including Cleveland, are taking steps to reduce the number of window collisions. As a part of the program, offices turn off exterior lights between midnight and dawn, as well as interior lights and/or draw blinds in the upper floors, and dim atrium and lobby lighting. Some cities, like Chicago, have reduced collisions as much as 80 percent by taking these measures! Doing this, even in the suburbs, can make a huge difference. Window collisions are a leading cause of injured birds being admitted to the Kevin P. Clinton Wildlife Center. So even here in Lake County, we can take the steps mentioned above to help save birds on their migration journies. Together, we can all help our feathered friends!

Although the Kevin P. Clinton Wildlife Center is currently not accepting injured animals due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there is plenty of information here, including what to do if you find an injured animal.

For more information about Lights Out Cleveland, click here.