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 April 2001
It's also extremely common. In Chicago a lakefront glass building called McCormick Place has killed as many as 200 birds in one day. And a communication tower in rural Kansas killed an estimated 10,000 Lapland longspurs on a foggy night two years ago--an avian Jonestown massacre. A billion birds die every year as a result of our need to see outside, according to Muhlenberg College professor Daniel Klem Jr., the author of several studies on bird-glass collision. According to Klem, lights atop tall towers disorient birds, who had no problem navigating by the stars before we invented electricity. Instead of continuing on their nocturnal migratory route, the birds circle skyscrapers--sometimes for hours--like moths around a flame. Some of the fatigued fowl simply die of exhaustion. Others find a resting place wherever they can--often in vest-pocket gardens near tall buildings. When the still-tired birds resume their migration, they often slam into the glass, either because they see only a reflection of the sky or because they are trying to make their way to all that lush vegetation in the lobby. "When a bird is flying, its vision is projected at long distances," Klem says. "Our suspicion is--and we're not birds, so we can only guess--that the bird is flying too fast to even be aware of its own image in the glass." The solution to the problem involves more than just installing a 20-story owl on top of the World Trade Center. (Although who wouldn't love to see that?) The Port Authority, which runs the complex, has lowered the death toll by covering part of One World Trade Center with common netting--but many birds still die around the rest of the building. Klem's research shows that outdoor planters need to be less than 12 feet from any glass so that departing birds will not reach top speed. He also wants to take a page from welfare reform and end glass as we know it. He's formulated several varieties that look normal from inside a building but are unattractive from the outside. Such surfaces scare birds, but they also scare architects. Klem presented his findings to the presumably sympathetic Architects, Designers, Planners for Social Responsibility, but the group has done nothing. The Empire State Building recently promised to shut off its fabled floodlights whenever a member of the Audubon Society reports that birds are circling, but this promise will probably go the way of "No New Taxes" when the reports start pouring in. Klem understands well the futility of the battle he's been waging for 25 years. "My level of alarm seems to be shared by few," he says. But that only prompts him to make a bolder statement: at a recent ornithological symposium, Klem didn't illustrate his lecture with slides--he just brought in some birds that had been killed around the building that morning. |
