#bird migration

[mapsontheweb]

A female falcon was equipped with a satellite tracking system in South Africa before migrating to Finland. Image shows tracker data. In just 42 days, she flew over 10.000 km, at an incredible average of 230 km per day and nearly in a straight line.    

[audible-smiles]

Oregonians: Lights Out Oregon starts tonight! It’s peak migration season for the next month, and millions of birds will be flying by night. Bright lights disorient them, draw them into cities, and increase the number of window strike deaths. If you have any overnight lighting, please consider turning it off! You can also call local businesses if you see lighted buildings overnight, to inform them of the risk.

Other people: Your city, county, state, or other region may have a similar initiative with slightly different timing or specific recommendations. Look it up!

[geopsych]

I was lucky enough to see a veery in the woods while walking with @alackofcharacter yesterday. They're one of my favorite woodland thrushes with a magical voice that seems to spiral downward. This one stood still long enough to let me get a clear shot. That hardly ever happens! The little wood near my house hosts at least one breeding pair every summer.

[charmed-n-zesty]

Coming home.

[monstermonger]

Migration 🐦🐦🐦🐦🐉🐦

[elliottnotyet]

The actic tern has the longest migration of any animal. It goes from the Arctic circle to the Antarctic circle, always chasing summer.

[Image ID: drawing of an arctic tern flying. It's a white bird with a black patch on the top of its head. End ID]

[toyastales]

Turquoise Cotinga

Photographer: Andrey Navarro

[stone-cold-groove]

The Migration of Birds - 1952.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Migrating snow geese stop off at the Reservoir Beaudet, in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada. Each year the hardy birds travel from the far north, where they breed in colonies on the tundra, to the balmy climes of the southern US and Mexico, where they spend the winter

Photograph: Bernard Brault/AP

[autumncottageattic]

gammsystrar

[iamtheweirdomister]

[birdingblog]

I spent about 4 hours at Hawk Ridge this afternoon and got to watch kettles of broad-winged hawks for the first time!! Most of the birds were too high to show up on my camera, so this is just a tiny fraction of what was there.

Besides the broad-wings, I saw in the ballpark of 100 sharp-shinned hawks, dozens of kestrels, and handfuls of bald eagles and common nighthawks, among other birds. Overall, a very exciting day!!

[geopsych]

Also, not-great pictures of a hermit thrush. Exciting because for me seeing them marks the time when I go off about bird migration and think about not much else for about a month. RIP chores and focusing on anything but that!

See also: Best Part of the Year

[charmed-n-zesty]

Around the lake.

[rjzimmerman]

Director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors Annette Prince holds a sora rail found by another volunteer as they patrol the downtown area collecting dead and injured birds on April 29, 2024. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

Excerpt from this story from the Chicago Tribune:

Annette Prince peered between glossy downtown buildings: ”There’s a bird in that grate.”

Sure enough, sitting very still in the rain was a tiny white-throated sparrow, so drenched you could barely make out its canary-yellow face markings. The bird was too dazed to move — an easy target for the hungry seagulls that were patrolling the area.

Prince looked up at the nearest skyscraper, with its rows of dark windows.

“He probably hit the glass up there and fell down,” she said.

A long-awaited policy update from the city of Chicago is supposed to help prevent such injuries and deaths, which occur by the thousands each year when migrating birds crash into local buildings.

But Chicago bird safety advocates say they are disappointed that the city’s policy update, now in draft form, does not make bird safety measures mandatory.

Instead, anti-collision measures, which can include installing glass with tiny markings, are included in a menu of sustainable design options from which developers working on affected projects can pick and choose.

“We feel it’s not adequate,” said Prince, chair of Bird Friendly Chicago, a coalition of local birding and conservation groups that’s been working for bird-safe building measures since 2016.

“(These measures) are not just bonuses — they’re essential to protecting valuable bird lives and a healthy environment, that these birds are foundational to. They’re good for people. They’re good for birds,” she said.

Chicago Department of Planning and Development Deputy Commissioner Peter Strazzabosco pointed out that the proposed policy update, available for public comment until May 15, gives additional weight to bird-safe building options.

Under the update, one category of bird safety measures would be awarded 30 points, compared with just 10 points under the current policy.

Those points count toward the 100 points that certain new buildings and renovations must earn — by choosing from a list of sustainability options — if the project developers want the city’s permission to build.

“(The new policy) has incentivized the bird-friendly design section by tripling the point total (in one category), and by including, for the first time, an implementation section that helps developers figure out how to use bird-friendly measures in their projects,” Strazzabosco said.

The draft sustainable development policy update would typically apply to about 50 to 75 new or renovated buildings a year, many of them larger projects that are getting some form of assistance from the city, he said.

The proposed update, the first since 2017, comes less than a year after at least 960 birds died in a single day after crashing into McCormick Place Lakeside Center, a glassy, low-lying convention building on the lakefront.