Making the Windy City Safer for Birds

[Bring Birds Back Stinger]

Deja Perkins: Douglas Stotz is a senior conservation ecologist at the Field Museum in Chicago. He works to protect birds from Chicagoland to South America and beyond.

[Chicago bird sounds]

He also is one of the ‘collision monitors’ at Chicago's convention center, McCormick Place. That means he spends some early mornings walking the perimeter of the buildings collecting and documenting any dead or injured birds that have hit the windows overnight — crucial data for understanding how our built environment endangers birds. But, long story short?

Doug Stotz: Basically, I'm a bird person.

Deja Perkins: Doug is understated in a classic Midwestern kind of way. To the point, self-effacing, a wry sense of humor. Like, I asked him what causes birds to run into windows...

Doug Stotz: …not being a bird, I'm not entirely certain.

Deja Perkins: So that's Doug. [pause] On the morning of October 5th, 2023, it wasn't Doug’s turn to do the collision monitoring, so he commuted to the museum a little later than his colleagues. And on the way, he was seeing his local birding Discord chat bursting with excitement.

[More bird sounds]

Doug Stotz:People were talking about the incredible migration on the lakefront that was going on, about these birds moving. And so I thought, I'm going to have to spend a little time out on the lakefront.

And so I stood on the lakefront, And I tried to estimate birds as they just kept coming and coming and coming south.

This was about 9:30, I had a 10 o'clock meeting. And still in this 20 minutes, my estimate was 6,000 birds went by me in this one spot. Mostly warblers, yellow rumps and palms. And, you know, people were estimating from single spots across the morning, you know, a hundred thousand at a spot kind of thing at several different spots at the same time. So there were millions of birds moving that day through Chicago.

[Birds fade out]

I went to the museum, I had my meeting, and I was thinking, there are going to have been a lot of birds in McCormick Place. I'll go over to the bird division and see what it looks like. And I was thinking maybe a hundred birds, which would be a lot. And I got over there, and in the preparation lab, every surface was covered in birds. They were still counting them up, but it was close to 1,000 birds, dominated by warblers like I'd seen. You know, we've had big days in the past, but they've been on the order of one to two hundred.

And it wasn't just McCormick Place. All of the buildings downtown that are checked by the bird collision monitors had big numbers. Around 2,000 birds were found downtown in addition to the 1,000 at McCormick Place.

I will say the migration of that day was something I've never seen in 40 years here, and the kill on that day was something we've never seen.

[dramatic pause]

Deja Perkins: From BirdNote, this is Bring Birds Back. I'm Deja Perkins.

[Music switch]

As a Chicago native, one thing that I’ve come to learn is just how abundant this city is with birds. And while urban environments can’t hold the same number of species as more pristine, unfragmented spaces, there are lots of birds that call urban spaces home. One of these is the Burnham Wildlife Corridor along Lake Shore Drive– known as an area of reprieve for birds and humans alike.

Birds of prey like red-tailed hawks, cooper’s hawks, and american kestrels can be found here. And vibrant songbirds like indigo buntings, black-throated blue warblers, and common yellowthroats are just as present. But as you approach the end of the migratory bird corridor and begin to transition into downtown, you meet a very central and historic building in Chicago- one that has proven to be deadly for birds on their migrations. That’s McCormick Place — the largest convention center in North America.

You see, one of the biggest dangers to birds in cities is buildings, particularly window collisions. Research shows that building collisions kill more than a billion birds every year in the U.S. –  one of the top reasons for bird population decline. And today, we’ll take a deep dive into why buildings are so dangerous for birds, and what organizers in Chicago are doing to bring attention to the issue.

Also in this episode, co-host Purbita Saha will take us to New York City’s Javits Center, a building that was once a deadly hazard for migrating birds every year and is now a wildlife haven. And later, you’ll hear more from Doug Stotz.

But first up is Judy Pollock, President of the Chicago Bird Alliance and one of the original organizers of Bird-Friendly Chicago, a coalition of several city organizations advocating for a safer city for birds.

Deja Perkins: Hi, Judy. It's so great to have you on the show today.

Judy Pollock: Yeah. And it's great to see you again, Deja.

Deja Perkins: So, let's jump right in.... we've shared with the audience about what happened on the day nearly one thousand birds died in one night at McCormick Place – and an estimated 3,000 total citywide… Now, obviously, that day is an extreme, but why does Chicago in particular see so many of these types of collisions in comparison to maybe some other large cities?

Judy Pollock:  It has to do with like, when you think about migration, a lot of the birds are coming up from, maybe South America, then Central America, and then they're crossing over the Gulf of Mexico, or crossing over Texas. You know, Alabama, and then right up the middle of the country, and then they're going up to the boreal forest in Canada.

And so, there's a big river of birds that's going essentially up the middle of the country. And Chicago is one of the closest cities to that river of birds.

Deja Perkins: So, I've- I heard from a little bird that collisions are less common the higher up birds go.

Judy Pollock: Yes. So a lot of the ordinances have you treat the first 75 feet or 100 feet of the building.  you know, you might have trees, uh, on the street and  the birds would be in the trees and then the reflections of the trees are going to be, Attracting them and killing them.

So, that is where the majority of the collisions happen. But, they do happen on those upper floors. It's just, it happens less frequently.

Deja Perkins: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, when it comes to bird collisions, we know how they're dying, but do we know the why?

Judy Pollock: the problem is twofold. You've got the problem of lights, and you also have the problem of windows. And, there's been research that's really shown if a city is putting out a lot of lights, the birds are actually attracted to the city, and then when they get into the city, that's when they meet their deaths, mostly at windows, so the lights bring them here, and then the windows confuse them.

So, there's two issues with windows. One is the reflectivity, you know, they're reflecting trees, they're reflecting sky, and the birds just think that, those are trees and sky, and they fly into them.The other problem is actually transparency. Sometimes you have a situation where you can see right through a building, you know, one way or another, and the birds think that they can just fly through.

These birds are coming from the rainforest, the cloud forest, and then they're flying up to the boreal forest. So they're really not in cities all that much, and they don't have experience with glass. You know, the birds that are killed are these migratory birds. Our regular resident birds understand glass and don't fly into it– House Sparrows and pigeons and starlings and so forth. The birds that are being killed live out in the wilderness and so treating the glass is, is the whole thing.

Deja Perkins: As we mentioned earlier, you are one of the organizing group members for Bird Friendly Chicago. Can you explain what Bird Friendly Chicago is and how it came about?

Judy Pollock: I think probably around 2018, we formed an organization to try to pass for a bird friendly buildings ordinance. A group of us, actually, between Chicago Audubon and Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, decided that we needed a coordinated effort of the bird clubs in Chicago. So we invited Chicago Ornithological Society to join us and the Field Museum.

Deja Perkins: What particular event compelled you all to start collaborating on this initiative?

Judy Pollock:I don't think it was particularly one event, but, it was just this constant mortality of birds. And I think around that time, also, Cornell came out with the research that said that Chicago was the deadliest city in the country for birds.

Deja Perkins: Kyle Horton, then a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, led a study with a team of researchers in 2019 called, "Bright lights in the big cities." In it, Horton and others demonstrated with two decades of data that light pollution disorients avian species already at high-risk while migrating through unpredictable weather due to climate change. In both the spring and fall— Chicago tops the list, followed by Houston and Dallas.

Judy Pollock: And that just really confirmed what we already knew. The Collision Monitors were out there picking up thousands of birds a year.  It was a bad situation. And other cities were starting to pass ordinances like at that time San Francisco and Oakland had ordinances and then they're doing great work up in Toronto. So, you know, we thought, well we should do it here. We've got a big problem and we've got solutions and so that's when we formed to start pushing those solutions.

Deja Perkins: And so what are some of those solutions that you all are pushing for?

Judy Pollock: Well, Chicago was the first city in the U. S. to have a Lights Out program. And we have almost 100 percent compliance, but we've been trying to pass this Bird-Friendly Building Ordinance that will require new buildings to have bird-friendly features. And, so, we've obviously run into a lot of resistance. We really thought that we were going to get a mandatory ordinance, at the beginning of this year we had worked for a really long time with the city. And then, sort of at the last minute, we heard that it was not going to be required, so that was a huge disappointment, I think right now we're actually finally on the right track.

Deja Perkins: Judy’s referring to an amendment of Chicago’s 2024 sustainable development policy, which was anticipated to pass early this spring. However, since receiving pushback for leaving out the mandate, it remains under review. The Chicago Department of Planning and Development began implementing more bird-safe options following a 2020 ordinance to prioritize a reduction in avian mortality.

Judy Pollock:But there's this thing called the sustainability checklist that buildings have to do if they want to get any kind of favors from the city. And so it's on the sustainability checklist for bird-friendly buildings and they did up the number of points. But there's no other codes that are affecting these windows.

And so you have to have a pattern on the window– a pattern that's so small that birds don't think that they can get through. They can be horizontal stripes, vertical stripes; they can be a dot pattern, in a grid or anything, as long as it doesn't have openings that are larger than two-by-four or even two-by-two inches.

[Music starts]

Deja Perkins: Okay, so, the ordinances call for these patterns in the glass. How exactly do you make this happen?

Judy Pollock:So the buildings that are already up, it's very expensive to retrofit them.

Deja Perkins: To retrofit a building is to add a significant new feature or technology to an existing structure. In this case, retrofitting glass on a building must include various considerations from construction worker safety to costs.

Judy Pollock: If you build the bird safety into the building, iIt's much less expensive. But other buildings that aren't doing that, they can get fritted glass.

Deja Perkins: Fritted glass uses ceramics to create visual effects and patterns that can blur and pigment the outer layer, and control the amount of natural light shining through a building.

This makes windows more visible to birds, reduces the troublesome glare present in transparent glass— and even lowers a building's cooling costs. Other acceptable solutions according to the ordinance include UV patterns, permanent stencils, physical grids, frosted glass, and netting.

Judy Pollock: And since we've started working on the ordinance, there have been more and more products. So now, you know, you can make a really attractive looking building that will not kill birds.

And research has shown that high rises, each individual building, kills the most birds. But most buildings kill one or two birds a year, so really, treating your own window is very, very important as well. That's where the majority of the mortality is occurring.

We've got a couple of other things in the ordinance, you know, reflecting pools that are close to windows can be a real hazard for birds. They hit the windows and they drown in the pools. So, you know, we have just other different hazards that the birds meet in the city, but the glass is the main thing.

[Music ends]

Deja Perkins:Can you tell our audience a bit more about McCormick Place and what makes this building so dangerous.

Judy Pollock:So, McCormick Place is big, first of all, and there's one building right by the lake that's called the Lakeside Center. And that's the building that we're talking about. It's got a big glass wall of buildings right on the lake. It's low. Big ceilings that you would expect of a convention center, but it doesn't have a lot of stories.

And this is a category of building that has a kind of mortality that you don't see very often. So these are birds that have been caught out over the lake as the sun comes up and then they have to land someplace. And so, they're heading for shore, and for whatever reason, those lights are just drawing them in and they're hitting the windows.

You've also got the skyscrapers that have the big exterior lights that serve sort of like beacons the birds actually will circle, especially on nights when the cloud cover is getting lower and that was what was going on, October, at McCormick Place, that caused all the mortality. You had this storm and you had the cloud cover just pushing the birds down, lower into the building space. And so, when you have that happening and then they're just attracted to the lights, as the birds are coming in off of the lake… presumably the birds are coming in off of the lake.

Deja Perkins: So I want to ask, about October 5th, 2023, what was that day like for you and maybe for some of your co-organizers within Bird Friendly Chicago in particular? How did that day make you feel?

Judy Pollock: Yeah. So, I mean, I wasn't out that day but the first way that I and I  think a lot of other people heard about it, is just how many birds was flying down the lakefront. Like, no one had ever seen anything like that.

One of the things that sticks with me is, usually, the birds, they're already dead by the time the sun comes up. So, they've hit in the early hours of the morning. But, that day, it just went on and on, well into the daylight.

And Dave Willard, who is the person who collects the dead birds from McCormick, he said that they were just hitting the building. So I think we have a lot to learn about what really is going on with these birds at night.

[music shift]

Deja Perkins: After these messages, we find out what researchers are learning about bird collisions from these bird specimens– and Purbita Saha takes us on a trip to New York City’s new and improved bird haven. Stay tuned.

MIDROLL

Deja Perkins: We’re back with Doug Stotz - whom you heard from at the top of this episode. Doug works at the Field Museum in Chicago, known as one of the greatest natural history museums in the world. As senior conservation ecologist, part of his role is monitoring local bird strikes.

Doug Stotz:We've been picking up dead birds every day during migration since the late 70s. And mostly that has been Dave Willard, who is collection manager for many years. He retired several years ago and now only works a little bit more than I do each week. He's been the person who focused on this project over the years.

Deja Perkins:So, we heard that the Field Museum has an extensive database of preserved birds. Is that true and can you share with us what exactly happens during bird monitoring? What do you do with dead and injured birds?

Doug Stotz:So, Field Museum has one of the biggest bird collections in the world. It's about 600,000 specimens, which sounds like a lot, but it's a worldwide collection. So we have about 9,500 of the 11,000-ish species of birds in the world.

So, what happens is somebody from the museum, somebody goes out and we check McCormick Place right about sunrise.

We walk the entire building, pick up any dead birds and we note where they were picked up, whether or not that window is lit up and we put them in bags they're probably about 20% live birds that we will pick up, and if they are releasable, we'll release them in the park away from the building; if they are not in very good shape, we work with the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors to get them to a rehab place. At that point, go back to the museum and the birds get logged into the system so we know we have them.

Back in the early 2000s, I worked with him to sort of do the first kind of analysis of how big a difference lights made a difference to the number of birds hitting. And then that paper in 2021 was much more sophisticated, included pieces of the meteorological data, which I never figured out how to analyze.

Deja Perkins: That study was spearheaded by Benjamin Van Doren, then a postdoctoral associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who structured a team to analyze the Field Museum’s nearly four-decades of data. Their study determined that cutting the lights from only half the windows at night reduced bird deaths by about 60% at McCormick. Other studies have proved even more drastic results:

Doug Stotz:And in terms of McCormick Place, we found turning the lights off, or pulling the curtains,, reduce the kill by 80 to 90% percent versus when it's lit up.

Basically all the small, passerine birds in North America migrate at night. And they use stars and the moon to help them orient. And it seems that when lights are on, it confuses them. That means they end up being attracted to areas that are well lit. And this happens at both a big scale of coming into the city, and then a more specific scale of individual buildings or actually individual windows.

So, the night that there was the huge kill, McCormick Place was all lit up. The lights were on, the curtains were open.

[Music]

Deja Perkins: What have you all found through this long term data set that you all have, what are some of your main findings?

Doug Stotz: In terms of lights this was the data set back in the early 2000s used to get the Chicago Lights Out program started.

Deja Perkins: Each collected bird specimen was measured with precise and consistent metrics over time.

And because of that, tiny little differences can be picked up. And a study that came out, used that data set to analyze long term changes in size.

And a graduate student at the University of Chicago, who's now at University of Michigan, Ben Winger, did a study looking at how things had changed and what he found was, in general, birds were getting smaller.

And he could correlate that change with summer temperatures to the point where if a summer was warmer than the following year, the birds would be a little bit smaller. If it was cooler, they'd be a little bit larger. So it really correlated with the summer temperatures.

You couldn't do that without this incredible sample.

Deja Perkins: Wow. It's amazing what you all have been able to learn, um, from this long term data set… So was this day in October, 2023, kind of like a turning point or was this just the typical day that you all like year after year, just do collection.

Doug Stotz:Yeah, this was not a typical day. A couple of students who were helping took photos of, the birds laid out and put them on social media.

And so that's something if it had been left to us old guys would not have happened. But when it got out on social media, it suddenly became this thing that everybody knew about. And it really was a tipping point, I think. It's the first time McCormick Place ever publicly responded to the bird kill issue.

They put out a statement that day and, you know, at the next meeting of the board, a petition was given to them calling for a change at McCormick Place. And I will give them credit, change is happening,

[Music ends]

Deja Perkins:That petition was started by Bird Friendly Chicago. Judy, her co-organizers, and more than 10,000 other local and national advocates co-signed the demand that the "Governor of Illinois, the Mayor of Chicago and those managing the McCormick Place Lakeside facility" take urgent action.

Judy Pollock:We had many, many meetings with them and they've done nothing.

But finally, now they are actually doing something. So that's great. They have treated their windows, but they also kept their drapes closed from the time of that bad incident, on through. So that helped a lot but. They're right on the lake and that's a part of the appeal. So we'll see this spring how well that works.

Deja Perkins: Can you tell us about some of the biggest oppositions that people kind of had to this ordinance. Like, why don't people want to implement this change for birds?

Judy Pollock:Right. Well, I mean, I would say if you ask the average person in Chicago, do they want Chicago's buildings to kill birds, they would say no. So it's really the development community that's organized against it. I also think there's kind of a push against having administrative bodies make decisions now and that's where the experts are, so it really makes a lot of sense for them to make decisions. But I just feel like there's kind of a national push against that, you know, just trying to take the power away from the people who have the know-how, you know.

Deja Perkins:Um, so from what I'm hearing, it sounds like you wouldn't necessarily call this a success thus far. Is that so?

Judy Pollock: Well, I mean, the McCormick Place - fingers crossed - may be a success. You know, we'll see when we get through a whole migration season You know, the Javits Center is an example of someone that went ahead and did the right thing.

You know, I just want to shout out anybody who retrofits a building. It's a big undertaking.

Deja Perkins:The Javits Center is located in downtown New York City. And only 15 years ago, it had a very different reputation.

Purbita Saha, my co-host this season, visited the building herself, to see just how this transformation came about... Purbita?

Purbita Saha:Thanks Deja. So, when traveling to New York's big convention center, I met up with Myles Davis — the Senior Manager of Green Infrastructure at New York City Bird Alliance — outside the venue.

Myles Davis: So, we're here at the Javits Center; an iconic New York City building on the west side, right off the Hudson River, and right in the heart of the city.

Purbita Saha: The Javits Center looks like a five-story-tall greenhouse — with massive panes of glass all around it. Since the final renovations in 2021, it spans over 3 million square feet. And similar to McCormick Place, it's super close to the water — a feature we know to be quite dangerous for birds in conjunction with lights and windows... But this building? Has a very different reputation:

Myles Davis:It's kind of our champion for bird-friendly retrofits and glass, and an example of what a green roof can do for wildlife in New York City.

Purbita Saha:But Javits wasn’t always a sanctuary for birds and birders.

Myles Davis:This takes us back to the early 2000s. Javits was still a building covered in dark and reflective glass. At New York City Bird Alliance, we have this volunteer network called Project Safe Flight. It was started in 1997 and we have about 150 volunteers that wake up early every morning and they patrol certain areas looking for where collisions are happening. And so, with Javits, we noticed that potentially thousands of birds were colliding with the glass here.

[insert music start here]

Purbita Saha:In 2009, Javits was named the deadliest building in the city for birds, having killed at least 470 birds in 5 years – a model of what not to do. That same year, their renovation plans were finally approved by the city’s development board.

The founder of the architecture firm doing the retrofits, Bruce Fowle, is a birder — and his wife happened to be on the board of directors for NYC Bird Alliance at the time. His firm and the nonprofit worked alongside each other to plan the bird-friendly redesign.

Myles Davis: And this was really special. It was one of the first major bird friendly retrofits in the city.

Purbita Saha:The retrofits were extensive. The center had to replace 8,000 panes of dark, mirrored glass from its curtain wall with translucent fritted glass. And the results of these changes were remarkable: In 2014, the year the center's glass replacement was completed, bird collisions dropped an astounding 90 percent, according to Project Safe Flight monitors.

Myles Davis:You know, there was a big turnaround from Javits being known as a notorious bird killer to a champion for New York city urban conservation.

With this major retrofit - just how successful it was - we were able to take that information and it was instrumental in helping us support local law 15, which is that all new construction and major renovation must have bird-friendly glass from the ground to 75 feet up. And so, this is new legislation put into place in 2020. And that's a huge step in getting more buildings to become bird-friendly, or at least buildings that are being put up or undergoing major construction. So, the Javits retrofit actually helped that happen.

Project Safe Flight, our volunteer network, we monitor around 80 buildings in the city and we're currently working with around 25 buildings to help them identify where their hazards are in their buildings. And hopefully, guide them through some retrofits as well. And Javits was the first.

Purbita Saha:It's amazing that one building's willingness to change, changed the laws in the city.

Myles Davis: And that all started with the bird friendly retrofits and then installing the green roof.

[Music ends]

Purbita Saha:Javits went beyond just collision deterrence with that retrofit. It was an all-out eco-friendly remodel. The convention center added solar panels and built out a nearly 7 acre complex of green roofs creating habitat for birds, bugs, and bats.

[Elevator ding]

But you’d never guess what makes this roof green…

Myles Davis:So this is the South Roof–  it's primarily just sedum, It looks like grass from afar, but it's not. It's a succulent. It's really good for water drainage. It's heat resistant, cold resistant. It's a great green roof material.

Purbita Saha:And this area is also home to a huge colony of Herring Gulls — a common species in New York, but one that's in decline globally.

Myles Davis:So we estimate that about 200 adult gulls annually come here and they build about 150 nests. By the time July comes around, there's about 500 chicks running around this roof.

Purbita Saha:So when this green roof was built, was it intended to be a gull nursery?

Myles Davis:So, a lot of green green roofs are– they're really good at absorbing storm water. They help cool the building. They help filter the air, reduce noise. They're also really aesthetic, but it was not intended for this to be a Herring Gull colony. We noticed that the colony was growing each year here. We started working with Javits to talk about how can we have gulls on this roof in really large numbers and make sure they're safe and that people are safe. So it's really a successful story of human wildlife coexistence.

Purbita Saha: Yeah, it's interesting the whole intention behind bird safe glass part is to deter birds. And then we've got this green roof that's become a home and habitat for birds. So you see both sides of the coin here at the Javits Center.

Myles Davis:Yeah, you know, around the world, Herring Gulls are kind of seen as a nuisance. And so, it's been really interesting to see Javits flip that narrative. We've been monitoring gulls here for almost a decade now and every year, we see the employees just get more involved. People hear about the colony, they want to do tours of the roof to see the hatchling chicks, uh, from the windows. That's not the case everywhere you see, like, urban gulls. People think of them as pests, but not here.

[*background sounds of the gulls*]

Purbita Saha: When we toured the roof in late July, most of the chicks were looking all grown up.

Myles Davis: Look at this. See, they're learning how to fly right now.

Purbita Saha: Oh!

[HERRING GULLS]

Myles Davis: Oh, They got it. They got it.

Purbita Saha: Tending to the gull colony is just one piece of the partnership between NYC Bird Alliance and Javits.

Myles Davis: The other side is biodiversity monitoring. And this really helps us get a more holistic idea of what Javits conservation impact actually is. So we're looking at birds, insects, arthropods, and we're also looking at bats.

After almost a decade of monitoring, we've detected 65 different bird species using this roof. That's almost 20 percent of the birds that are usually observed in New York City. And some of those birds that we're seeing are really sensitive or at risk species. New York City is right along the Atlantic Flyway, one of the four major historic migration bird flyways on the continent. And so, because of that, from spring to fall, we have millions of birds, over 200 species stopping here, and they're resting, they're refueling, sometimes breeding because they have really long migration routes.

And so if they can't find any habitat that has the right resources for them to feed on, that could be a life or death situation. On the northern part of the roof there is a full orchard, with about 50 different fruit trees. And there's a farm that produces 15,000 pounds of produce and crops each year. And then there's a pollinator garden!

Purbita Saha: These areas provide habitat for a wide variety of insects and other arthropods. This crawling buffet draws in all kinds of birds that otherwise would struggle to find food in this part of New York City. Myles rattled off a long list of sightings from Winter Wrens and Blackpoll Warblers, to Eastern Towhees, Northern Parulas, Savannah Sparrows, and many more.

Javits and NYC Bird Alliance continue to work together, improving the experience here for both wildlife and people. And with the help of city folks, including farmers and birders, the Javits Center is a great example of when community advocacy, conservation, and infrastructure come together.

Myles Davis:Collisions are a reality for every building in a city, especially if you don't have bird-friendly glass. And so, fortunately, it's a relatively simple thing to fix.

Javits has a huge influence on green infrastructure in New York City, and it's probably an example for the world at this point.

Purbita Saha:Well, we certainly know now that it's possible. Thank you, Myles.

Alright, Deja— back to you.

Deja Perkins:Thanks, Purbita.

As we’ve heard in this episode, urban spaces can be very difficult terrain for our feathered friends to navigate. Here are some ways you can do your part to help birds during spring and fall migration:

Whether in a large city or a small town, just get involved. Advocate for Lights Out Programs in your neighborhood, speak with your local architects and developers about the benefits of bird-friendly designs, or even attend your city council meetings to share this information.

And while Chicago’s fight is looking better, it’s not over yet. Bird Friendly Chicago needs your help making their ordinance a mandate. Stay up to date as they prepare for their next campaign — check out the link on our website, BirdNote dot org.

Last but not least: treat your windows. Yes, even you. Remember that the majority of all bird collisions occur on low-level residential buildings. Whether you rent or own. Do your part.

As an urban ecologist, I am a huge advocate for urban birding. It might seem from this episode that birds and urban spaces are two things that should not go together. But urban spaces are environments that are important for conservation too.

And as the world becomes more urban, the more we need to fight for urban conservation and greenspaces for the benefit of people and birds alike. We have to do more than just advocate for bird safety in our man-made world, we also have to ensure their survival.

I hope this episode inspires you to take action for your local birds – they need your voice.

[Music break]

Many thanks to Doug Stotz, Judy Pollock and Myles Davis for helping us share this important story.

To learn more about our guests, Bird Friendly Chicago, or find other resources about this episode, please visit our website at BirdNote.org.

And follow us at Bring Birds Back on Instagram for the latest updates and behind-the scenes about the show.

The Bring Birds Back team includes producers, Mark Bramhill and Sam Johnson; Managing Editor, Jazzi Johnson; Fact-checker, Ariana Remmel; and Content Director Jonese Franklin.

Our music is by Cosmo Sheldrake and Blue Dot Sessions. And this episode was hosted and co-produced by me, Deja Perkins.

Thanks for listening!
 

Myles Davis:  Also, sometimes, uh, I met building residents around here. And they would see me, cause they can see the roof from here. They would see me just walking around with an umbrella because the gulls poop sometimes. And so I would walk around with an umbrella to avoid getting pooped on. And people would recognize me and they have video of me walking around on the roof.