Category
May 17, 2025
Spring bird migration is underway, and in North America alone that means a mass movement of billions of birds.
Some of those warblers, thrushes, sparrows and woodcocks never make it to their summer breeding grounds because they collide with buildings, especially tall, light bathed structures in urban downtowns. Usually flying at night, the birds become disoriented by light pollution and shimmering glass, sometimes circling buildings until they fall in exhaustion, other times fatally striking walls and windows.
The volunteer group Lights Out Cleveland has crews in downtown Cleveland each morning before dawn, starting in mid-March and going to about June 1, to collect birds from sidewalks and streets. Patrols are resumed for fall migration.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer, go to this site for information on how to sign up: Lights Out Cleveland is in need of more volunteers this spring!
Many of the fallen birds are dead, but some – about 3 out of 10 - survive, are picked up and taken to the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center in Bay Village, which has a remarkable release rate of 95 percent because of the talents of wildlife rehabilitation specialist Tim Jasinski and his crew.
Lights Out Cleveland started in the spring of 2017 thanks to the combined efforts of Jasinski; Matthew Shumar, program coordinator for the Ohio Bird Conservation Institute; and Harvey Webster, formerly chief wildlife officer and museum ambassador for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (now ambassador emeritus).
Since its launch the group has collected some 20,000 birds.
The volunteer group has asked large downtown buildings to turn off lights during spring and fall migration. Some buildings have already enrolled in the program, including 200 Public Square, the Ernst & Young tower, FirstEnergy Stadium and Fifth Third Center. Similar efforts are underway in about 30 cities across North America.
Cornell University, renown for its ornithology programs and expertise, cites recent research that estimates 365 to 988 million birds die each year in collisions with buildings, including not only high-rises but also residences.
Lights Out Cleveland’s “collision monitoring crews” walk specific routes multiple times each morning. Spring migration is just getting underway; the number of downed birds will increase as migration season gets into full swing. Fall migration is even busier because adult birds are returning south with young born a few months earlier.
One morning in October 2017, the program’s first year, skies were clear and winds favorable overnight for a heavy movement of birds. Then a front came through, sending birds into the urban jungle to evade the weather.
“The clouds hung so low you could not see the top half of most of the buildings,” recalled volunteer coordinator Liz McQuaid. Crews that morning picked up over 250 birds.
Bird experts used to think that birds would typically fly into the south side of buildings as they head north and the north side in their fall migration south. But it turns out collisions are more a factor of what windows are reflecting – if other buildings, birds tend not to mistake windows for clear passage. But if windows are reflecting clouds and other scenes of nature – trees on Public Square, say -- they are misled.
Volunteers carry large nets on sticks, similar to butterfly nets, to trap injured birds. They are carefully removed from the nets and placed in lunch bag-like brown bags. Those that have made it are sometimes just stunned and in need of rest and nourishment.
From downtown, all the birds are taken to the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center. Dead ones are weighed, documented, put in plastic bags and placed in a freezer until there are enough to take to the Natural History Museum for further bird studies.
Live ones fly free. The first to do so, a Song Sparrow, shot off March 17 into the woods behind the nature center.
Lights Out Cleveland is in need of volunteers for this spring and for fall migration. Learn more at: ohiolightsout.org/participate/monitoring/
