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It’s In Your Nature: Migration peril on the upswing

You know my passion for being in nature, and probably most exciting there is finding and seeing a great variety of birds.

Most of my birding is done right here in the Times News region, where we have a surprising number of species.

My birding this year was a bit limited due to my knee surgery.

Birding buddies Dave and Rich both have recorded around 200 species this year in Carbon County. Many of those birds are migrants that regularly feed here on their trips north in spring and again south in fall. Rich just reported a Connecticut warbler in East Penn Township. They are not common but could be seen only as a fall migrant.

Now is the peak time for the passerine (perching) birds to migrate. They drop into our woodlots, pastures, marshes and forests to feed during the day. They rest a bit, and after dark resume their long treks southward. Night migration is an advantage because they can avoid avian predators (hawks and falcons) and it is generally cooler. They can then use the daylight to refuel for the next evening’s flight.

It is this nighttime migration, though, that can be fatal.

Case in point: Last Oct. 4 in Chicago along the shores of Lake Michigan, one building caused over 1,000 songbird deaths in one night. Countless more were found dead on the sidewalks near other buildings as well.

An event at the McCormick Place Lakeside Center was held in the evening and, unfortunately, too many lights were inadvertently left on. The glare of the lights and excellent north winds aiding in the southern migration led to this disaster at a major migration time.

The building is not that tall (about eight stories) but the part of the building facing the lake is almost entirely windows. Unfortunately, it’s not non-glare glass.

This was an exceptional event, but tall buildings sheathed in many glass windows in Philadelphia and New York take a terrible toll, especially in the southerly migrations in late August, September and early October.

Cellphone towers and microwave towers on ridge tops take a toll as well. Some even have wires (cables) to help secure them, which is also a problem.

You probably don’t realize the numbers that migrate. In one evening, one site along the Texas coast detected more than 1 million birds passing by the radar scan. That’s just one night in September!

I lived for many years in East Penn Township, and before the traffic increased, I often would sit outside in September around 10 o’clock in a comfortable chair and listen for the twittering of birds flying over head. If you don’t need to worry about how your neighbors view you, give it a try on a quiet night over the next few weeks. Hundreds may pass overhead in just an hour or two.

Other new migration threats are wind turbines, which for more efficiency are built on ridge tops where songbirds and bats migrate. The diminutive ruby-throated hummingbird will be migrating soon (hawk watchers are reporting some each day already), and most of those that nested here will trek to Central America. If they choose the wrong day to try to fly the 500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico, a bad storm could knock them into the water or exhaust them before they reach the distant shore.

About two years ago, wildfires in California and Oregon during the Pacific Flyway migration time sent birds flying farther east across the dry, leeward side of the Rockies. They found little food in the arid and semi-arid areas and huge songbird kills resulted.

Hopefully, we can help with better building construction, altering the lighting of tall buildings at night and putting up fewer cell towers. Our springs and summers could be eerily quieter if we don’t help.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: The sounds that crickets and katydids make by rubbing their wings together are called: A. articulations; B. echolocations; C. stridulations; D. none of these.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: Bat droppings are called guano.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com

Warblers by the millions leave their breeding areas of Canada and the northern U.S. as the daylight shortens in mid- to late August. Chestnut-sided warblers like this one may be in the first wave, so many of these weren’t victims of the terrible window strikes on that early October night in Chicago last fall. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
Of the vireo species, the blue-headed vireo is one of the first to arrive here in April and one of the hardier ones that linger into early October. They keep feeding on insects clinging to the foliage just beginning to change color before dropping to the forest floor. These later migrants were many of the dead window-strike birds in Chicago last fall. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
Red-eyed vireos arrive here a few weeks later in spring than the blue-headed vireo. However, they too can still be seen here up to about Oct. 10. They were a big portion of the dead in the bird kill last fall. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
I’ve seen palm warblers here in early April, and in fall they are probably the last warbler species to migrate south through our area. They were a big part of the 1,000 birds collected in Chicago after that fateful night last October. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
Male ruby-throated hummingbirds are the first to arrive here in late April, but are also the first to depart in August. Juvenile hummers, like this one, and the females remain here longer. They fly just above the tree or ridge tops. In migration, they feed for a few hours in the morning, migrate 25 miles or so, feed again and then rest overnight. It is important that they nearly double their weight before the dangerous crossing of the Gulf of Mexico. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
For your devices to work better, communication towers are usually placed atop hills or on ridges. The towers claim many migrating songbirds, which often fly just above the ridges. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS