At the peak time during bird migrations, if half of the lights of buildings in a city were turned out, it could save about 60% of birds from colliding and dying, claims a new study. The study was conducted by scientists from five universities across America and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
After studying data from a building in Chicago — McCormick Place, scientists found that if half of the building’s windows were kept in dark, it could protect the birds as many as 11 times from colliding into them during spring migratory season. During the fall migratory season, turning out lights from half of the windows could reduce the bird collisions by six times.
“Our research provides the best evidence yet that migrating birds are attracted to building lights, often causing them to collide with windows and die," said Benjamin Van Doren, the lead author of the paper, in a news release by the Field Museum of Natural History.
In 1978, David Willard, the collections manager emeritus at the Field Museum of Natural History, went to Chicago’s McCormick Place one early morning. He had heard about birds hitting the building. When he reached the building that is the largest convention centre in North America, he found four to five dead birds. For 40 years, he kept coming back and recording the data and taking the dead birds to the museum, which have grown to a number of 40,000. 20 years after he started, he noticed a pattern. On nights when building lights were off due to some reason, he found no or fewer dead birds. This made him also record the illumination of the building and its windows.
Using bird data and lighting patterns, the new research that was published in the June issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the most in-depth study of the link between migratory bird deaths and city lights.
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