It’s another rainy one today, though it’s supposed to clear up later. We’ll see, either way it’s pretty soggy out there.
And yet the work continues.
Before we dive into Thursday, thank you so much, Gail, for the coffee!! I did indeed savor it this morning, or at least I tried to savor it this morning but I’m in a chug-the-coffee-kind of stretch. Probably the weather. Thank you so much for the pick-me-up!
And now Thursday.
There’s been a big problem here in Chicago with migrating birds hitting windows of buildings, so much so that the Field Museum maintains a collection of “salvage” birds brought in from such collusions. A warning about the link: there are pictures of the dead birds, so if that is an issue for you I’d skip it.
In fact 1000 songbirds died when they hit McCormick Place during overnight migration in a single day in 2023, (again, the header contains bird specimens), which prompted the lakefront event and convention space to cover the windows with a bird-friendly dotted film.
So given the needles loss of life, the city started Lights Out Chicago (no dead birds) which asks homes and businesses and residential buildings to turn off unnecessary exterior lights, have high-rise residents turn off lights and draw blinds, and other mitigation factors to try to decrease the number of avian fatalities.
And now there’s this really cool site (and perhaps an app, though I’m not sure,) called BirdCast. Like the Merlin app that helps to identify nearby birds by their call, it’s produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and it has a bunch of really cool tools, including real-time numbers of the birds flying through Cook County overnight.
This morning, I see 523,400 birds flew over the county last night. Mostly songbirds, from what it says in the page, as they tell you what types of birds are likely in flight.
Think about that, all of them, invisible in the darkness, soaring their way from here to there. What’s closing the blinds and turning off lights if we can help them to make it?
Anyway, that’s it for me on this Thursday. I hope you have a wonderful day, and check out your own area on the BirdCast site.
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