tHis legs were delicately stuffed on the side of his small body, as if he was asleep. If it does not lie on exposed concrete on Texas Street, there are few clues that will endure violent deaths.
The bird first flew to the Bank of America building, a 72-story modernist skyscraper in the center of Dallas. Its body was classified by volunteers who tried to record the birds caused by birds that hit glass, metal and concrete structures decorated with confusing lights that form the skyline of our city.
It is estimated that about a billion birds die in this way every year, one of the main drivers of shocking slump. For the dozen volunteers who headed downtown before dawn, every loss was solemn on a pleasant May morning in May.
“If you have too much to do every morning, it can frustrate you, which can be bleak,” said Tim Brys, community engagement manager at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Texas, The Lights of The Lights, Texas! Activity. “It’s horrible to think that these birds have been crossing the Gulf of Mexico and only fly to the first glass building.”
The buildings in Dallas, as well as other Texas cities, are especially fatal obstacles, as they sit on the central flight path, the main migration route for birds to cross North and South America. Through Texas every spring, this is one-third of the birds.
“That’s a lot of birds,” Bris said. During the peak of the spring immigration season, light surveys require three times a week - 295 deaths were recorded last year. Volunteers have collected and marked over 100 kinds of more than 100 kinds since 2020, including sparrows, pigeons, songbirds, ovens and more unusual discoveries such as Lazuli Bunting or Woodcocks, which are usually found in swamps.
But, Brees admits, there is no way to fully calculate such deaths, as birds often crash into office towers, houses, power lines, and to a lesser extent despite some claims. Loss Complex - Each songbird killed may have up to six nests per season, with up to six eggs in each nest. "So the loss of a bird is 340 birds in two years," Brees said.
For birds marching from dark forests or grasslands, sudden blur of lights and glass walls found in cities may be death traps. On a map of light pollution in the United States, Dallas is a burning lighthouse that tilts the light from its buildings, rather than focusing it where it needs to. Most birds are nighttime immigrants, hard-wired, able to navigate the moon and stars, artificially replacing these pathfinders, coupled with reflections in glass, especially nearby trees pursued by bird targets, disorientate many and fall into buildings.
"We had a security guard telling us that these birds hit glasses because they became stupid," Brees said. "I said 'Okay, imagine trying to run in a 35 mph mirror maze, how far do you think you'll go?' If we've never seen glass before, how many people would you think would walk into a glass door or window?"
Light pollution has been around since the invention of the light bulb, but it wasn't until the last 20 years that dazzling, invasive light began to mask stars, with dangerous birds flying at night at night, said Teznie Pugh, head of McDonald Persveratory at the University of Texas. “It became a major issue,” Pug said. “Every generation, we are basically halving the number of stars you can see at night.”
Globally, light pollution has increased by about 10% per year since 2011. But by rethinking too much lighting, this advancement is often both expensive and harmful, and the advancement of bird-friendly glasses that blend dots or stripes to warn birds of imminent obstacles.
Cities such as Houston and New York have vowed to reduce bird strikes, which changed its annual 9/11 tribute, throwing biaxials towards paradise if more than 1,000 birds are captured, captured in their beams, and more than 1,000 birds are captured, and biaxials are thrown towards paradise.
McCormick Place in Chicago is the largest convention center in North America, notorious when 1,000 birds lashed out one night in 2023. "This building is a real killer," said Adriaan Dokter, an ecologist at Cornell's ornithology laboratory. But the center has already installed bird-style glasses, reducing crashes by about 90% last year.
In Dallas, the Reunion Tower is a landmark similar to a giant golf baseball, dimming its lights during the peak of the spring migration season, while activists are putting pressure on the city’s convention centers to take action. This sprawling building has a lot of black glass at the height of birds, which does not help near the shelves of trees. The center is undergoing renovations and lights are extinguishing volunteers are inciting it to install bird-safe glass.
“No one wants to be a building that kills a large number of birds, and often it’s a simple solution, like turning off the light or using curtains,” said Mei Ling Liu, organizer of a light for the Texas Conservation Union.
The ingrained habits of construction and lighting exacerbate LED lights, which are worse for birds and insects, but cheaper and more effective. Bird-friendly glass also costs more than the standard version. "It's a challenge," Liu added. "It's not a construction issue when it comes to pollution, it's the whole city. Dallas is still very smart."
When Dallas began to emerge from its sleep, the wearing volunteers continued to find birds on the tour. A warbler was found on the ground at the foot of the hotel - put it in a brown bag and sent it to the rehabilitation center. A young, dead joke is not so lucky, another bird, a splashing warbler, Liu must grab the pliers and shake it as it is covered with ants.
In total, 12 dead birds were found, placed in bags, logged in and placed in a freezer at the Perot Museum, which installed bird-safe glasses after smashing some windows during the 2020 "Black Life" protests.
A quiet spring looms over birds, with North America having three billion fewer birds than in the 1970s, which researchers call “amazing.” About one-third of birds require critical conservation actions, and in the richest places, the number is the fastest. "The biggest drop of these strongholds is really shocking and excellent," Dokter said. "Ecologically speaking, we're seeing birds disappearing super fast."
Condors and California vultures may have saved from the brink of extinction, but more broadly, fewer birds are now available. Pigeons There were many pigeons flying overheads covered in sunlight and were completely wiped out.
As a result, our world has fewer songs, fewer colors, and fewer wonderful feelings. Behind this feather crisis is a toxic cause – habitat loss, chemical use and the climate crisis in it – but one that seems to be the tragedy of birds falling into buildings.
"The benefit of this issue is that we can quickly change it within our range, which is not like climate change or plastic pollution," Dokter said. "The bird safety design of windows is the future and more cities are aware of the lighting problem. Even in their own homes, we can affect that. We can solve this problem."