Lights Out Northeast Florida Shows Birds the Way

 

The night of September 21 is projected to be busy with over 400 million night-migrating songbirds in flight.  We had an extremely interesting and relevant presentation by Elizabeth Filippelli, Conservation Director for Duval Audubon, and for Lights Out Northeast Florida, a joint effort between the Duval and St. John's Regional Audubon Societies and the Jacksonville Zoo and Garden.  

Here is her presentation:  Lights Out NE Florida. I had prepared a handout to give attendees some background on the role that darkness plays in enabling night-migrating songbirds to successfully navigate their spring and fall migrations using the stars to orient themselves.  We are more than halfway through the fall migration, a particularly dangerous journey because many of the migrants were just hatched in the spring and don't know the route.  

Darkness is not only essential for successful bird migration, but all species evolved to live in a regular diurnal cycle of light and dark.  Human- created artificial light has detrimental effects on plants and animals.    See the handout, Songbird Migration Resources.  The central point of Elizabeth's presentation, however, was that we can something about it.  From reducing and modifying nocturnal lighting to minimizing one of the greatest hazards to flying birds:  reflective windows.  Both residents and businesses have a stake in making bird-safe changes to nocturnal lighting and to windows.  Over 40% of residences (three stories or less) are responsible for collision deaths.  And over 60% of collisions prove fatal to birds; many deaths occur days after impact because brain swelling kills the bird long after the accident.  After listening to Elizabeth, I collected a post-presentation resource, Reducing Bird Fatalities. 

Presenter Elizabeth Filippeli holding two books she found interesting.  Ornitherapy and Blue Mind