Turn the lights out, save the birds

[Donna]

Efforts under way to douse nighttime lights on downtown Cleveland skyscrapers, saving millions of migrating songbirds

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Bird enthusiasts want Cleveland to join other big cities that douse nighttime lights on tall buildings each spring and fall to spare the lives of millions of migrating songbirds.

Over the last year, they began asking the city's downtown landlords to join Smart Lights/Safe Flights, an initiative similar to light-dimming efforts adopted in Chicago, New York and Toronto.

"If you turn your lights out you're saving energy, you're saving money and you're saving the lives of migratory birds," said Harvey Webster, director of wildlife resources at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and a Smart Light leader. "So where's the downside?"

The idea is to prevent decorative exterior lights from disorienting the night fliers -- including warblers, tanagers and thrush -- and causing them to crash into skyscrapers and towers.

Studies estimate that more than a billion birds die every year from collisions in the United States -- more than any other human-related cause except for habitat destruction.

And every morning at dawn, custodians armed with brooms and dust pans emerge from the skyscrapers in Cleveland and elsewhere to sweep up the colorful bodies.

Webster is seeking corporate partners, including the owners of Terminal Tower, and addressing members of Cleveland's Building Owners and Management Association.

He said this week that he hopes to have a citywide Smart Light agreement by the end of spring migration, which runs from mid-March to mid-June, or at least by the start of the fall migration from mid-August to mid-November.

"The new banks of lights that bathe the Terminal Tower at night certainly look beautiful," he said. "But it doesn't have to look beautiful at 3 o'clock in the morning."

The National Audubon Society has introduced a how-to guide for cities interested in dimming lights. The society recommends turning off all decorative lighting after 11 p.m. and dousing interior lights or covering windows with a film visible only to birds.

Ornithologists in Chicago estimate Audubon's Lights Out program has helped to cut that city's bird-strike mortality rate by 80 percent, saving 10,000 songbirds a year.

Scientists aren't sure why, but artificial lights confuse migrating birds that use stars and moon as navigational aids and sometimes mistake the glow from towers as celestial lights.

Downtown Cleveland poses a particularly dangerous passage for migrating birds. The city is located on a busy migratory flyway and prone to severe weather, including sudden storms, brutal lake winds and low-hanging clouds -- all factors that force birds to fly lower.

Bird-strike data is scarce for Cleveland, but what little documentation exists isn't good.

From 2002 to 2005, wildlife rehabilitation specialist Megan Tadiello collected fallen birds from the sidewalks surrounding the BP America Building, now known as 200 Public Square. She collected 679 birds of 66 different species -- the most common of which was the white-throated sparrow.

Anecdotal evidence provided by local birders indicates that the Key Tower, PNC Tower and glass-covered 55 Public Square building also take a high toll on migrating birds.

Caption: A favorite nighttime flocking site for birds is in the decorative lights that illuminate the crown of the Key Tower building on Public Square. In this shot, hundreds of gulls gathered last May to feed on insects.

and I thought they were stars