500 Dead Songbirds in 1 Morning, Over 1 Million Dead in 1 Year, In Toronto, Alone:

[amborin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/world/americas/casualties-of-torontos-urban-skies.html?hpw

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/10/27/world/americas/20121028-CANADA.html?ref=americas#2


White-Breasted Nuthatch

Casualties of Toronto's Urban Skies

In the shadow of the massive black towers of a bank’s downtown headquarters here was an almost
indistinguishable puff of dark gray fluff on the sidewalk.

It was the body of a golden-crowned kinglet, an unlucky one, that had crashed into the iconic Toronto-Dominion Center building somewhere above.

There is no precise ranking of the world’s most deadly cities for migratory birds, but Toronto is considered a top contender for the title......

snip

“They’re getting killed everywhere and anywhere where there’s even the smallest garage window,” Professor Klem said. “In the case of Toronto, perhaps because of the number of buildings and the number of birds, it’s more dramatic.”

So many birds hit the glass towers of Canada’s most populous city that volunteers scour the ground of the financial district for them in the predawn darkness each morning. They carry paper bags and butterfly nets to rescue injured birds from the impending stampede of pedestrian feet or, all too often, to pick up the bodies of dead ones.

The group behind the bird patrol, the Fatal Light Awareness Program, known as FLAP, estimates that one million to nine million birds die every year from impact with buildings in the Toronto area. The group’s founder once single-handedly recovered about 500 dead birds in one morning.

Toronto’s modern skyline began to rise in the 1960s, giving it a high proportion of modern, glass-clad structures, forming a long wall along the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario.....

snip

After years of conducting rescue and recovery missions and prodding the city to include bird safety in its design code for new buildings, FLAP has recently begun using the courts to help keep birds alive. It is participating in two legal cases using laws normally meant to protect migratory birds from hunting and industrial hazards to prosecute the owners of two particularly problematic buildings.

snip
The building has a glass facade that disorients birds by reflecting the surrounding trees. Perceiving the reflection as habitat, birds zoom at it full throttle without regard for the danger.

The victims are largely songbirds.....

All the birds collected by FLAP, dead or alive, go into paper bags. Though there were no survivors that recent morning, the merely stunned or frightened would have been released in a park near the shore of Lake Ontario. The injured would have been taken to one of two animal rehabilitation centers outside the city.

The dead birds, with the location of their deaths marked on their bags, first end up in a freezer at FLAP’s headquarters, which is part of a sympathetic city councilor’s offices. Although the autumn migration was barely under way, the freezer was already close to full. Its contents ranged from owls to hummingbirds, and the vividness of their plumage was generally offset by the gruesomeness of their smashed heads.

“If the people were colliding with buildings at the same rate birds are, this issue would have been dealt with a long time ago,” Mr. Mesure said. “There’s a detachment in society about this.”

One especially effective, if unpopular, method of reducing the threat to birds, Mr. Mesure said, is simply to cover the outside of windows up to the height of adjacent trees with the finely perforated plastic film often used to turn transit buses into rolling billboards. The film can be printed with advertising or decorative patterns, although the group has found that a repetitive pattern of small circles made from the same adhesive plastic is both effective and less likely to prompt aesthetic objections.

For new buildings, the solution can be as simple as etching patterns into its glass. A German glass company is also developing windows that it hopes can take advantage of the ability of birds to see ultraviolet light, by including warning patterns that are invisible to humans.

[NCarolinawoman]

1. Breaks my heart.

There should be enough songbird-loving people around to be able to put pressure on city councils, mayors, etc. to make the changes needed.

I think there might even be some Republicans who would support this-- so many retirees become backyard birdwatchers. They just need to be made aware!

[ladjf]

2. At this point, from a Nature point of view, humans are dangerous parasites infesting the entire

Earth, to the detriment of all living things. It appears that the human race is to dumb and greedy to survive much longer. nt

[banned from Kos]

3. True. But mass extinctions existed long before humans came into being.

We will see another mass extinction this century.

#5, IIRC.

Too often, the culled out are the most innocent (Songbirds).

Darwin is god and sex is the propeller of evolution.

[ladjf]

4. Yes, many mass extinctions. That's life on Earth. Just read that 1 million songbirds are killed

every year in the city of Toronto due to flying into glass buildings, a problem that could be corrected for a few million bucks.

But, homo sap-ian, a species that has only been around for approx. 350,000 to 500,000 years would be the first species to ever annihilate themselves and in record time. By comparison, sharks have swam the oceans for about 200,000,000 years.

Sometimes I cynically think that perhaps the prime directive for the human race is to assist the Universe by causing entropy on Earth to happen as fast as possible. That's nonsense as I know because within another billion years, our Sun is going to deal with the situation most harshly as our surface temperature will convert us to a molten ball.

[banned from Kos]

5. Because humans must now live in comfort away from nature

As we homosapiens clear rain forest and savage the redwood and Appalachia for our air-conditioned comfort we defile the Earth.

We dam rivers and destroy salmon for our 68 degree comfort.

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

All for a dusty sepulchre.

[ladjf]

6. I like the way you think. We need at least about 200,000,000 more Americans to follow your

lead.

Loved the poem. Thanks.

[deaniac21]

7. The city of Toronto should

be tried at The Hague.