Wildlife advocates are sounding the alarm after more than 1,000 birds were killed or injured in window collisions in the Chicago area last weekend, reports Fox 32 Chicago’s Nic Flosi. Volunteers with the nonprofit Chicago Bird Collision Monitors spent October 17 and 18 rescuing wounded birds and collecting the bodies of dead ones in downtown Chicago and the northern suburb of Evanston. They searched a small area, and they can “only find what’s on the ground,” Prince tells WTTW’s Patty Wetli.
Many more birds probably go undiscovered, she says. That huge number of birds coincided with a cold front, which brought favorable northerly tailwinds that can help push birds south. Across the country, more than one billion migratory birds were estimated to have taken flight that night.
An estimated one billion birds die after colliding with buildings in the United States each year. Chicago is located along the Mississippi Flyway, a major migratory corridor for millions of birds traveling between North, Central and South America every spring and fall. But the city’s abundance of windows and artificial lights can make it a hazardous place for birds to navigate.
Birds often don’t see transparent glass, or they mistake its reflections of the surrounding scenery for a clear path forward. As a result, they can end up crashing into windows while traveling at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour, which can cause death, internal bleeding, concussions or other injuries. Artificial lights can also attract and disorient birds, increasing the risk of collisions, particularly at night, when many species migrate.
The birds that make it to Chicago every spring and fall, Prince tells WTTW, are “fit and strong.” But the city’s lights and windows are “taking out the best members,” she says. North America has lost around three billion birds since 1970, a figure that represents about 29 percent of the continent’s population, or more than one in four birds. In many places, the rate of decline is accelerating, likely due to warming temperatures and intensive agriculture, research suggests.
Chicago has seen high numbers of deadly bird collisions before. In October 2023, nearly 1,000 birds died in a single night after crashing into McCormick Place Lakeside Center, an event venue with a primarily glass facade. Ahead of the 2024 fall migration, the building’s managers spent $1.2 million installing a special, polka-dot-covered film designed to help birds better differentiate between windows and open air.
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