Together Green Fellowship Funds a Brighter Future for Portland’s Birds
by Mary Coolidge, Assistant Conservation Director
September 2010
Last month, we got some great news in the form of a $10,000 TogetherGreen
fellowship from Toyota and National Audubon. This critical funding
will allow us to continue the important work of helping Portland to
realize its aspirations of bird-friendliness!
BirdSafe Portland
has just entered its third season with the help of a diehard group of
early-rising Citizen Scientists who are on the lookout for birds that
have fallen victim to an insidious hazard on our urban landscape: window
glass. It’s everywhere. And it preys on even the healthiest of
individuals in our migrant and resident bird populations. Bird Safe
volunteers have come upon a startling list of neotropical migrant
songbirds: Western Tanagers in their bright orange and yellow plumage,
Swainson’s Thrushes, better known by ethereal song than flashy garb, and
Lincoln Sparrows, Black-throated Gray Warblers, and Orange-crowned
Warblers, all an unfamiliar sight in the city. And that’s just the
beginning of the list of victims.
Why do birds hit windows?
Portland is nestled along the Pacific Flyway, a migration route that
brings 209 species of resident and migratory birds right through our
airspace -- luckily, many of them are likely to stick to the forested
uplands that flank the valley. Otherwise diurnal species migrate at
night to escape predation, to use stars as navigational cues, and to
maximize daytime foraging for refueling along their long-distance
migrations. But they can be drawn into lit urban areas where they face a
hazard they don’t recognize.
To help reduce the luring of birds into urban areas, there is a growing
list of cities in the United States (18 and rising!) that have launched
Lights Out, and Portland is just beginning to throw its hat into this
ring. With the help of Together Green funding, we are already working
on launching Lights Out Portland by doing outreach to buildings in hope
of signing up early endorsers. Participants will voluntarily turn their
lights down or off during three months of spring and three months of
fall migration when strike rates are highest.
What’s turning up?
We picked up a scant 14 birds last spring during the same time that the
Audubon Wildlife Care Center took in 60 window strikes of 21 different
species, all native. So far this fall (2010), we’ve recovered 32 birds,
with 2 weeks left of surveys. Every one of the birds we find is
necropsied to determine if their injuries are consistent with strike
mortality. And again and again, we’ve been dismayed to find a
well-fleshed bird in good condition aside from head and chest
hemorrhaging that are the most common strike indicators.
The Care Center takes in between 200 and 300 window strikes per year,
nearly 10% of the total annual intakes, which reiterates what we already
know about our surveys: we have a detection problem. That’s at least
in part because of a slew of obstacles: gates, terraces, awnings,
rooflines, maintenance crews and scavengers. The best way around these
obstacles is to solicit inside help. Starting last season, we engaged
building managers at 20 buildings to get the message out to staff and
tenants, in order to make use of the eyes and ears onsite and to
increase our coverage and detection. We are seeing an increase in
reports and will work to keep increasing the awareness of this issue on
our local landscape. On September 13th alone, I picked up 12 Swainson’s
Thrushes and a Rufous Hummingbird behind Lewis and Clark Law School
after receiving a report of window strike carnage.
What’s next?
We have big plans for putting our Together Green grant to good use! We
will continue our morning surveys, which are helping to establish
important baseline information about Portland’s strike rate. We’ll also
use this funding to help forward several associated BirdSafe Portland
priorities beyond the Lights Out campaign, including: insertion of
meaningful bird-friendly language into the Portland Plan; adoption of a
Model Light Ordinance in Portland to promote responsible lighting;
outreach to local green architects to raise awareness about LEED
(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) credits for
bird-friendly building designs; and adoption of Bird-Friendly Building
Guidelines (already in place in New York City, Minnesota, Toronto and
others) in the city of Portland. We’re also working on writing
bird-friendly measures into the Backyard Habitat Certification Program
to help homeowners make easy fixes on problem windows to minimize
strikes at home.
For more information, email Mary Coolidge at mcoolidge@audubonportland.org
