Photo: Purple Martins, Keith Kindon/Audubon Photography Awards
Laura Anderko
The spring migration for birds is happening NOW - from March 15 through May 31 our feathered friends are making their long journeys north. It is estimated that over 100 million birds fly over northern Virginia in the spring. Migration usually occurs at night, and many birds use the stars to navigate.
Artificial light can turn their migration journey into a deadly one. Bright lights and city skyglow attract the migrating birds, leading to window collisions or exhaustion from circling lit structures, and can lead to death. In some areas light pollution is doubling every 8-10 years, increasing concerns about the dangers to migrating birds.
Bird Safe NOVA’s spring Lights Out for Birds campaign asks you to reduce the hazard to our migrants with a few simple actions:
Turn off non-essential lights from 11 PM until 6 AM during critical migration periods, March 15 through May 31, and be ready to do the same for fall migration (September 1 through November 15).
Where lights cannot be turned off for security or operational reasons, dim the lights or draw curtains where practical.
Turn off decorative landscape lighting.
Aim other outside lights down and make sure they are shielded to minimize light pollution.
Prioritize warmer colors for outdoor lighting where lighting is absolutely needed.
If you live or work in a multi-tenant building, encourage your building management to reduce excessive outdoor light during the migration season, and encourage tenants and other occupants to turn off indoor lights at night or close blinds to prevent glare, particularly from upper floors. We encourage you and your building management to sign our lights out pledge.
Bird Safe NOVA also is getting some assistance from local governmental authorities. Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors pledged to promote our campaign and identify county facilities where nighttime lighting can be reduced or eliminated during migration. It offers tips on reducing lights and helping birds on its website, and other northern Virginia jurisdictions have promoted dark skies to help birds and other wildlife.
To increase the fun of helping out northern Virginia’s migrants, make sure you use Cornell Lab’s BirdCast, which can give you information about migration in your location (migration dashboard), alerts for peak migration (for Washington, D.C.), and maps showing migration forecasts and live bird migration. The local alerts and forecasts can tell you when it is particularly important to douse those nighttime lights.
So, let’s all take steps to help migrants passing through our area make it to their northern breeding grounds. And consider what you can do during the rest of the year to reduce light pollution. Artificial light can be detrimental not just to birds, but to other wildlife and to people. In her book Night Magic, author Leigh Ann Henion describes how light impacts owls and many nocturnal pollinators such as insects and bats who depend on the dark for their survival and are important to our food supply. Bird Safe NOVA’s Restore the Night program seeks to reduce light pollution to protect our environment and migrating birds.
If you want to get more involved in helping us build a bird-safe community, contact NVBA at advocacy@nvbirdalliance.org and check out our Bird Safe NOVA resources.