North American bird migration flyways

Beginning with the raptors (birds of prey) in March and culminating in Warbler Season in May, and then again from August through October, birds face an incredibly dangerous journey, flying between their summer nesting territory and their winter residences.

It’s always been dangerous for reasons related to weather and predation, but with the conditions imposed by us, it’s now a gauntlet. First we had the advent of guns and market hunting that, two centuries ago, began wiping many out. In the last century alone, communications towers and hydro lines and glass buildings and habitat loss and so on have amounted to Billions of birds lost.

The other day, I watched a documentary by New Hampshire Public Television on bird migration. I learned a few startling facts about habitat loss and other pressures that decimate bird populations. Most alarming of all was that bird mortality while migrating is as high as 85%. I doubt that’s due to hurricanes and low seasonal food, though these are real risks that birds have always faced. I’m sure that most are due to human activity:

  • Building and tower lights on at night throwing birds off course, exhausting and killing them. Birds migrate at night, and the light of the moon used to guide them. Now, our overlit cities and buildings misguide them.
  • Bird strikes on power and cellular telephone infrastructure — guy wires and towers also are responsible, it’s not just wind turbines.
  • Critical habitat loss on migration routes. Birds need to land and feed, timed with their food source according to the season and weather, before proceeding north (or south) again.
  • Bird strikes on buildings, now more than ever. Glass architecture is killing millions of migratory birds. And it’s not just big buildings! An individual home may only be killing a handful of birds a year, but there are so many homes out there that those numbers really add up quickly.
  • And the grand winner: Our pet and feral cats are the biggest killers by far. Do not underestimate the carnage that your sweet kitty causes. It’s not good fun. If you absolutely insist on putting your cat outdoors – you’re wrong, but still – do it only at night, when birds are in flight. During the day, they need to come down and search for food, water, and rest. They need it. The cat’s just playing. (So put a BirdBeSafe collar on kitty!)

It happened to me

First, I documented an earlier encounter where a Golden-Crowned Kinglet crashed on my patio, but was only stunned for a little while. I gave it some convalescence time and it was ready to go within the hour.

In 2014, I found this Canada Warbler around 8:30 AM one morning outside the iconic blue-mirrored Windsor Salt building in Pointe Claire. I blogged about it then. That blog post evolved into this blog post. These businesses need to fix their windows and landscaping.

It’s needlessly tragic when you find a Canada Warbler dead at the foot of a mirrored glass building.

This little White-Throated Sparrow force me to act:

The kitchen window, prior to treatment
I found the dead bird on the deck below the window
With a few loose feathers from the crash
The yellow lores above its beak is the identifying fieldmark
bird crash victim
White-throated sparrow window crash victim

I felt so bad about this because it was a problem I was already well aware of, and I hadn’t done the job I needed to do. So I began applying strike prevention on my windows.

Though Montreal isn’t directly in a flyway, glass buildings everywhere kill more birds than should ever have been permitted.

Yet another example

I found these two birds at 10 o’clock one September morning at Locas Pepinière, a greenhouse in Laval, where I was buying an apple tree. The clerk said it was a common occurrence. I was saddened by this, and gave them appropriate feedback about how to fix the problem. I took the birds with me and buried them where I planted the tree.

Bird strike victims.

Things you can learn and do

There are three things we all need to do for birds (and this message is so old now that NOT doing something about it is delinquent):

  1. Install bird-strike prevention on your windows,
  2. Turn off building lights at night, and
  3. SPEAK UP about this to everyone who will listen, but building managers and city councils, especially!

You could join or start a strike-count and prevention group, and patrol the streets of your city during spring and fall migration, and rescue the survivors before they get picked off by predators.

FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program) is in Toronto, in the middle of a massive migration flyway. Montreal isn’t in the middle of a flyway, and the speculation is that the lay of our landscape, with the mountain, hasn’t resulted in the scale of avian mortality seen in Toronto. That may need more research to see if it’s still the case with the recent, dense boom in glass tower construction.

SafeWings Ottawa is the nearest chapter (to Montreal) of a strike-count and prevention group. They have good advice on preventing window collisions. 

Finally, increase the bird habitat at your property to give sustenance and shelter to migrating and overwintering birds. Hospitality to birds will increase the chances of a window strike, so hang your feeders closer to the house rather than further away. If the feeder is closer to a window, their flight speed near the window will be slower and more controlled. But the risk of smacking into the glass is eliminated… when you mark your windows.

If you need any help in applying decals, tape, and other means of strike prevention to your windows, let me know, and I’ll gladly help.