Silence of the Songbirds by Bridget Stutchbury (2007) serves as a course text that highlights several important topics related to bird conservation. Throughout the semester, students will read select chapters and compose responses to the readings. Groups of students will also further investigate conservation topics by finding primary literature publications pertaining to the issues discussed in the text. Below is are two student responses to research topics related to the chapter titled “Big Lights, Big Danger”:

Invisible killers: Windows

Blogpost by Daisy Santos Torres

You’re startled from your work by the sound of a soft “thump” or “wack” you turn to your window and find a small smudge against the glass. It may be the first time you see this or maybe it’s the 20th. You might reach for the windex to wipe away the smudge. As you reach for your paper towels you remember that one scene from the movie Storks where the stork repeatedly smashes against the glass maze as it tries to get to the other side to escape the pack of wolves. The movie from Warner Brothers had it almost right. It’s not that birds can’t see your windows it’s that the type of windows you have!

“What do you mean its my windows?” You may ask a bit frustrated, shocked, and offended. Well, I’m only half right it’s your windows and, don’t get even angrier, your bird feeders. Researchers Justine Kummer, Erin Bayne, and Craig Machtans published a paper in The Condor: Ornithological Applications in 2016 to find the major causes of bird collisions in residential areas. Through the participation of citizen scientists, they were able to assess the following contributors of bird collisions: the neighborhood, type of yard, the type of home, and the type of windows. Participants homes ranged from urban to rural homes with developed or undeveloped landscape the use of a bird feeder, what type of building or home you lived in, and if your windows were reflective or not. They asked citizens to record how often they heard a bird collision against their windows, record if they found a smudge, blood, feathers, or an injured or dead bird near their residence. They found that collisions occur in both types of neighborhoods urban and rural but that bird collisions increase when there is a bird feeder near or around your home. Bird collisions were not exclusive to bird-feeding birds like chickadees non-feeder birds’ collisions also increased with the presence of a bird feeder.

The presence of your bird feeder, complex vegetation, and reflective windows produce a cocktail for disaster. Your windows may reflect the sight of your bird feeder and instead of these hungry guys aiming for the actual feeder that’s only a few feet away they aim and strike the reflection of your feeder. In non-feeder birds, they might aim at the reflection of the trees or other vegetation surrounding your home.

Although this study thoroughly looks into various possible sources for increased collision it did lack one aspect. How can I eliminate bird collisions? One thing to do is to remove your bird feeder! If this option is out of the question then we need to remember that the problem of the bird collisions is not the presence of the bird feeder but of the windows. Now before you remove all the windows from your home simple things can be done to reduce the reflection of your windows like adding decals, curtains, shades or anything that reduces the reflection of your window.

Kummer, J. A., Bayne E. M., Machtan C. S., (2016). Use of citizen science to identify factors affecting bird–window collision risk at houses. The Condor: Ornithological Applications. 118, 624-639. doi:10.1650/CONDOR-16-26.1           

Ficarra, G (producer) & Stoller, N & Sweetland, D. (Director). 2016. Storks [Motion Picture]. United States: Warner Brothers.

Communication Tower Chaos

Blogpost by Mireya Romero

Everyone is guilty of driving by communication towers and not asking themselves
of the threats they pose on our wild creatures. Every fall and spring, our migratory
species have a grueling task of flying miles on end with only the Earth’s magnetic field,
sun, and stars to help guide them. This journey becomes even more complicated when
thinking of the impact urbanization has on nature. Communication towers are involved
in thousands avian fatalities throughout the migration seasons due because of their
distracting nature for birds in flight. Communication towers come in varying heights and
varying lighting systems, thus research has been conducted to find out which type of
communication tower is involved in the most fatalities and to propose a solution to this
conservation issue. Joelle Gehring and his colleagues at Central Michigan University,
published the research article, “Communication towers, lights, and birds: successful
methods of reducing the frequency of avian collisions”, in 2009, which studies the
differences of avian fatalities between communication towers with different types of
lighting systems. Are towers with a combination of flashing lights and steady lights
involved in more avian fatalities than towers with only flashing lights?

The research started with the random selection of communication towers, excluding
those within 1.6km of an extensively lighted area or a part of an “antenna farm”
(congregations of communication towers) in order to avoid lighting bias. Once the
towers were selected, nighttime lighting systems were randomly assigned to the
towers. Certain towers had both flashing lights and steady lights installed on them,
which is the system approved by Federal Aviation Administration, while other towers
exclusively had flashing lights. After proper installation of the lighting systems,
technicians were sampling carcasses for twenty consecutive days during the spring
and fall migration of 2005 (May 10th to 29th and September 7th to 26th).

While there were differences in the numbers of individual birds and species found
under the tower, both fall and spring samples revealed that towers with steady lights
were involved in more fatalities than towers with only flashing lights. With this, the
researchers thought of the FAA using only flashing lights on their communication towers
as a simple solution to greatly reducing the number of bird fatalities during migration
season. Not only would this solution benefit migratory species, but it would also benefit
the FAA since steady burning lights would be eliminated and therefore lower electric
consumption, electric costs, and maintenance costs. Since lighting seems to be a big
issue for migratory birds, the research could be expanded by studying the differences
between the varying light colors seen on communication towers. This study only goes to
show how much a infrastructure most people do not think about can prove to have such
a big impact on other beings, such as migratory birds. Fortunately, there are practical
solutions that can help the problem regarding communication towers, which need to be
heard and put into action.