Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

Chicago Lights

My friend Cathy has been finding dead birds in the Windy City, victims of high-rise glass towers and bright lights. The migration seasons in particular takes an enormous toll. Here’s some more information about how skyscrapers kill and what can be done about it. This is a picture she sent me: it’s an Eastern bluebird, Sialia sialis – to my mind one of the most beautiful birds in North America.

Ornithology was predicated on the bird in hand, usually dead. Collections are filled with “skins,” as they are called, or stuffed specimens. The essence of a bird, however, must surely be its motion, its elusiveness to us plodding humans. Still, this a rare opportunity to contemplate the millions of years of evolution that made this creature.

And perhaps we can also contemplate the stillness.
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Update: Another friend, Karen, who lives in New York State, alerts me to this fine essay by Verlyn Klinkenborg on light pollution’s other effects.

mthew

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3 responses to “Chicago Lights”

  1. Out Walking the Dog

    So sad. I just posted about finding a rose-breasted grosbeak dead beneath a glassy hotel in St. Louis. The numbers of birds killed by collisions with man-made structures – especially high-rises – is staggering. And I agree with you about the beauty of the bluebird. I grew up seeing them, but haven’t seen one in so many years. Must go on a bluebird quest one of these days.

    Reply
    1. mthew

      They aren’t often seen in NYC, but upstate is a good place to run into them.

      Reply
  2. Glenn

    NYC Audubon’s Project Safe Flight has worked for nearly fifteen years to improve understanding of bird collisions in NYC, to monitor problem buildings, and to advocate for a safer city for birds. We’ve had a few great successes, at the World Trade Center, and the Morgan Mail Processing Center, but many more people need to understand the issue before good solutions will be created. NYC Audubon’s Bird-safe Building Guidelines, first published in 2008, have been licensed to the American Bird Conservancy to help promote their adoption across the US.

    Volunteers are needed to help monitor buildings across the city. I just found a dead Northern Parula in front of a brownstone in Brooklyn, so this isn’t just a problem of skyscrapers.

    Reply

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