Photo: Purple Martins, Keith Kingdon/Audubon Photography Awards
By Tom Blackburn
Billions of birds die each year from human-made causes. NVBA, Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy, Nature Forward, DarkSky NOVA, DarkSky Virginia, Friends of Dyke Marsh, and Friends of Little Hunting Creek have formed a partnership, Bird Safe NOVA, in an effort to reduce the devastating toll on birds from excess light and window collisions.
Lights Out for Birds
More than 100 million birds migrate north through northern Virginia each spring, and 160 million birds, their numbers swelled by a successful breeding season, migrate south through northern Virginia in the fall. Most birds migrate at night to take advantage of calmer winds and lower temperatures, relying on the moon and the stars to help them navigate. The birds can be disoriented by bright lights from tall buildings and sky glow from light pollution and crash into the buildings or fly around the lights, squandering the energy needed to make their demanding journeys.
Bird Safe NOVA’s Lights Out campaign is a voluntary program that involves turning off and/or blocking as many external and internal building lights at workplaces as possible at night to help prevent the death or injury of birds migrating through our area. The key times to reduce lighting to protect migratory birds are during peak migration, which in northern Virginia is from 11 PM to sunrise, March 15 through May 31 and September 1 through November 15. Bird Safe NOVA joins Lights Out programs throughout the United States that focus on turning off excess lights during the spring and fall bird migrations.
Restore the Night
2012 composite image published in Science News, June 10, 2016
Artificial lighting is increasing globally by about 10% per year. Light pollution -- unshielded, misaimed, too bright, too white, and on-all-night lights – causes birds to lose sleep, show signs of increased stress, and have less successful breeding seasons. It also disrupts the lives of other wildlife, from insects to mammals, as well as humans. The Bird Safe NOVA partnership will work to publicize the importance of reducing lighting and work with local organizations and governments to help reclaim the night sky.
Bird-Safe Buildings
More than one billion birds die from collisions with buildings in the United States each year. The birds mistake the reflection of trees and vegetation in a window for open space and fly into it. Among the human-made causes of bird deaths, only habitat loss and outdoor cats are responsible for killing more birds.
Building in Reston, VA. Photo: Tom Blackburn
Houses and other buildings up to 3 stories high cause slightly less than half of the deaths, and buildings 4 to 11 stories high account for the rest.
Bird Safe NOVA will publicize the ways homeowners can reduce the number of bird collisions with their windows and advocate for retrofitting commercial buildings and constructing new buildings with bird-friendly glass.
Bird Safe NOVA Program
Join us at 7:30 PM on October 9 for an online kick-off program. Our speakers include Greg Butcher, the recently retired Migratory Species Coordinator for U.S. Forest Service’s International Programs; Christine Shepherd, the American Bird Conservancy’s Bird Collisions Campaign Director; and Laura Greenleaf, the volunteer leader of DarkSky Virginia. The program is free. You can register for the program here.