songbirds

FLAP recovers three species at risk from bird collisions

in Conservation  by May 14, 2014 0 comments

Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) just released a sobering news release about three federally listed species at risk that they have recovered from building collisions in Toronto. We’ve written about FLAP on our blog before, they’re an incredible group of volunteers committed to advocacy and rescue work surrounding bird collisions with buildings.

If you’re in Toronto’s financial district in the very early morning of spring or fall, you may spot someone scurrying along the sidewalk carrying paper bags and a butterfly net. That’s a FLAP volunteer, scanning the street for a stunned bird that they can rescue or a dead one they can lay to rest.

So far this spring, those volunteers have recovered a live Red-Headed Woodpecker, a dead Golden-winged Warbler and one live and six dead Wood Thrushes. All these birds are protected under the federal Species at Risk Act and we can’t afford to lose anymore of them.

Last year, we filmed with Keith Pardiek at the Breeding Bird Survey, a joint American-Canadian songbird population-monitoring program. While there, he shared some distressing statistics with us: since 1966 Wood Thrush populations have declined 62%, Red-Headed woodpecker 70% and Golden-winged Warbler 70%.

“These birds play a vital ecological role,” said Michael Mesure, Executive Director of FLAP, “There are many commercially available, aesthetically pleasing solutions that can help to reduce bird collisions with buildings. Urban structures can be made safe for birds.”

We have filmed with FLAP several times over the course of shooting our documentary. The footage is inspiring and we can’t wait to share it with you. The story isn’t all doom and gloom either; there are reasons to be hopeful. FLAP’s advocacy work has led to some especially deadly buildings to be treated with bird-friendly window decals.

The same day FLAP published this news release, The New York Times published a feature about a large-scale research collaboration with New York City Audubon, the American Bird Conservation and Fordham University focused on various types of glass and their ability to deter birds. The goal of the project is to help conservationists and ornithologists understand and prevent this needless carnage.

FLAP Canada is asking anyone who finds a bird that has collided with a building to report the incident on FLAP Mapper – a live web tool that they have developed. Users can easily report a collision on an interactive map, as well as view locations of others.

 

Related posts:

  1. Ottawa Citizens Start FLAP Bird Rescue Initiative
  2. Scientist uses light study to prevent bird collisions
  3. FLAP launches birding apps for International Migratory Bird Day
  4. The Messenger Action Alert: Help Protect Birds from Window Collisions.

Scientist uses light study to prevent bird collisions

in Conservation  by May 12, 2014 0 comments

Last year we were with bird expert Bill Evans as he conducted one of his DIY experiments: beaming lights into the sky to test the impact of artificial light on night migrating birds.

Inside his home laboratory, Bill used weather radar to determine if the birds would be migrating across our rural New York location. That’s right – flocks of songbirds are large enough to appear on weather radar systems. “We still have a low cloud ceiling and maybe some light drizzle so the birds can’t see the stars they use for celestial navigation,” he said. “They’re going to have to rely on their internal compass or other cues that we’re not even aware of.”

The light rain is good for the study.  Water particles in the air refract light and lead birds to aggregate. Bird aggregation in cities however, is bad news. “The phenomena is of course what’s causing the tower kill phenomenon,” he said.

Toronto’s Fatal Light Awareness Project estimates that between 100 million and one billion birds die from collisions with buildings every year in North America. Bird collisions typically occur at night when birds are migrating and lights inside buildings are turned on. Bill is trying to understand the mechanism that induces light aggregation in birds, not just in cities, but for the ever increasing numbers of communication towers and wind turbines.

That night Bill learned that certain colours of light are more dangerous than others. Red light, which is typically blamed for bird mortality at tall TV towers, did not provoke bird aggregation but did with blue, green and white light.

Listening to the audio recordings was especially telling. Within minutes of the lights being beamed into the sky the calls of the confused birds increased dramatically. As soon as Bill turned off the lights the calls ended.

In some instances, industry is adopting safer lighting for communication towers and turbines. As for the rest of us, can we be convinced to turn off the lights in our cities?

Related posts:

  1. Lights Out for Earth Hour will save migrating birds
  2. FLAP recovers three species at risk from bird collisions
  3. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Andrew Farnsworth
  4. The songbirdSOS experts talk about International Migratory Bird Day

The songbirdSOS experts talk about International Migratory Bird Day

in News  by May 8, 2014 0 comments

On Saturday, May 10 2014 thousands of birders across the globe will be celebrating International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD). We checked in with the experts we interviewed in the film to see what they are doing on this special day.

Robert Rice is the acting director of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Centre, which founded International Migratory Bird Day in 1993 in Washington, DC. The event has grown to involve more than 700 events in North America each year. This year, Robert will be going to the Okanagan Valley’s Meadowlark Festival to give a keynote address at the opening event.

In Northern Alberta Erin Bayne is too busy with his fieldwork deep in the Boreal forest to plan anything out of the ordinary for Migration Day.  This spring field season involves coordinating fourty people with work like setting up recording devices, banding for migration studies, and teaching new students about banding, telemetry and behavioural observations.

Ornithologist Bridget Stutchbury will be spending the day with her husband Gene (also an ornithologist) birding around their farmhouse in northern Pennsylvania. She has been trying to attract her favourite bird, the Purple Martin, to the property for years and usually goes to the Purple Martin Conservation area in Erie, Pennsylvania to get her fix. The species’ natural habitat is tree cavities, which are very scarce, so Bridget built a birdhouse colony in hopes that they will thrive in the area. Bridget spotted a Purple Martin on April 6, her earliest sighting yet.

Everyday is Bird Day for Bill Evans. He works on his nocturnal monitoring project every day of the year. Each morning this spring, Bill has been analyzing migration flight calls gathered from six recording stations. Peak migration season is fast approaching, so this is an especially exciting time for his team. On Saturday, Bill will be doing his normal daily routine: crunching bird call data from across the continent to put online on his site OldBird.

Andrew Farnsworth has a busy day of birding in New York City planned for Saturday. The night before, he will be watching weather radar to see how migration is proceeding across the United States. If the skies are clear and the winds are southerly, he will be listening to flight calls in the early morning hours. He will be in New Jersey just after dawn, birding in the DeKorte, Liberty and Secaucus areas, and perhaps to Rumson and Sandy Hook. Later in the afternoon he’ll hit Central Park.

The team at the Aras Bird Banding Station in Turkey has a very busy day planned; they will be banding and releasing birds for an audience of children, students, and members of the public. The district’s director of conservation will also be there. Cagan Sekercioglu, the director of the Aras Conservation would normally be there but he is getting married!

Related posts:

  1. FLAP launches birding apps for International Migratory Bird Day
  2. Geolocators track bird migration routes
  3. Scientist uses light study to prevent bird collisions
  4. Geolocators Track Songbird Migration

Lights Out for Earth Hour will save migrating birds

in Conservation  by March 28, 2014 0 comments

Earth Hour is tomorrow! On Saturday March 29 between 8:30 and 9:30 thousands of homes and businesses across the planet will be turning off their lights to celebrate their commitment to the planet.

Humans should of course be concerned about the affect that light pollution and overuse of electricity will have on the environment every day of the year. Light pollution can be deadly for songbirds as they migrate at night. The Fatal Light Awareness Project (FLAP) estimates that between 100 million and 1 billion birds are killed due to window collisions in North America every year.

So even if it just for one hour, Earth Hour helps provide safe passage for migrating birds during spring migration season.

FLAP has just launched a new tool to alert people to the concentration of birds as they fly through the Great Lakes Region. Bird Migration Tracker can let people know to turn lights out at night and treat windows during the day. Bird Migration Tracker is free and available online, try it out yourself on FLAP’s website.

The tool is a live-streaming Web page that displays current weather conditions, moon phase and weather radar. Flocks of migrating birds are so highly concentrated that they appear on weather radar!

Alert levels range from low to extreme and are determined by a compilation of indicators displayed on the webpage. It is imperative to turn lights out at night during Heavy to Extreme intensity alerts.

Have you used Bird Migration Tracker? Tell us what you think.

Related posts:

  1. Scientist uses light study to prevent bird collisions
  2. FLAP launches birding apps for International Migratory Bird Day
  3. Pesticides Make Migrating Birds Lose their Way
  4. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Andrew Farnsworth