Photo: AdinaVoicu via Pixabay
Ines Nedelcovic and Robin Duska
Fall migration is expected to peak from September 15 to November 3 in the northern Virginia area. You can help protect the hundreds of millions of birds that are expected to fly over our area by turning off or dimming non-essential lighting during critical migration periods. Type your location’s name into BirdCast’s local migration alert tool to see how many birds are expected to fly over on any given night. If the tool indicates migration is expected to be “High,” please turn off any nonessential lights that would be visible to birds, including outdoor lights and, if you have access, those in tall office buildings.
Turning off or dimming non-essential lighting during critical migration periods drastically reduces bird deaths, because artificial light can attract, confuse and disorient migrating birds by competing with the natural nighttime light from the stars and the moon by which the birds navigate. Disoriented birds exhaust themselves and also can collide with buildings. Hundreds of millions of birds die in collisions with buildings annually, including many species of high conservation concern.
Lights Out efforts to attack this problem are underway in over 30 North American cities. Learn more about what you can do from this information from the International Dark Sky Association and National Audubon. More information on migration in your area is also available from the BirdCast Migration Dashboard. BirdCast applies weather surveillance radar to gather information on the numbers, flight directions, speeds, and altitudes of birds aloft in order to expand the understanding of migratory bird movement.
Illustration reprinted with permission from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Learn more and see when bird migration is happening in your area, with forecasts and real-time bird migration maps at Birdcast.info.
Read our article on Lights Out here.