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