1,000 birds collide with a building in Chicago
(Credit: Daryl Coldren/Field Museum.) Some of the nearly 1,000 migratory songbirds that died after colliding into the windows of a single building in Chicago. The birds were on their way to Central America for the winter.
Michigan lies at the intersection of the Mississippi and the Atlantic flyways, migration routes that bring over 350 bird species through the state each year.
The Michigan DNR reports that earlier this month, nearly a thousand migratory song birds traveling to Central America for the winter, died in window collisions with a single building in Chicago.
Species included many long–distance Warblers that also travel through Michigan, including hundreds of Palm Warblers and Yellow–Rumed Warblers.
While collision events as large as this are rare, bird collisions are not.
They are a leading cause of bird mortality, with up to 1 billion bird deaths yearly in the us alone.
Some of these birds are dubbed “super–colliders”
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, discovered that by turning off half the lights in Chicago during bird migration, 60% fewer birds would die.