17 Jul Bird Conservation in the Park
While bird conservation through science communication has been a large part of my job, I have also had the opportunity to participate in ongoing projects around the park. The Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center is very conservation minded, so they wanted to “bird proof” one of their buildings that has a history of many window strikes. The number of windows makes this building a potential hotspot for bird collisions because there are over 40 big windows. One of the rooms serves as a meeting room for certain events throughout the year. One of these days, we went out to train people on how to use iNaturalist and Seek for citizen science projects and our supervisor found a dead Wood thrush on the roof of the building after having crashed into the window. Wood thrush breed in the midwestern states of the U.S, so we knew that if he was not breeding he was fit and able. It is a fate like this that millions of migratory birds suffer each year.
Migratory birds face many obstacles during their lengthy journeys. They face issues maintaining their health throughout the flight; they pause at stopovers where they refuel and rebuild a large percentage of their original body weight. Birds must also safely navigate to their final destination, as they return to the exact same breeding site as the year before. Birds migrate large distances at night and they can be attracted to bright lights left on overnight. This can disorient them and cause them to fly into the windows or walls of buildings. Window collisions are one of the top causes of bird deaths during migration. According to Loss et al. (2014), there could be between 365 and 988 million bird deaths caused by window strikes each year in the United States. With so many mortalities, it is incredibly important to take action to protect our bird populations.
There are organizations that work with community members and cities to reduce night lighting to lower chances of strikes. A local one for Cuyahoga Valley National Park is Ohio Lights Out who monitor buildings around populated cities including Cleveland, Akron, and Cincinnati. They also provide education and ideas on how homeowners can add to their bird friendly homes. One of these suggestions is window stickers to allow birds to clearly see windows. This is what Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center decided upon when thinking of strategies to mitigate bird hits. The past few weeks, we have been working to put up stickers on the windows and hopefully will be expanding the project to more people soon.
No Comments