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CHBC picnic and Lights Out Program



Howdy!

AN INVITATION!

You're invited to the Chapel Hill Bird Club potluck picnic Monday, May
21, 6:30 pm at Ebenezer Church SRA on Jordan Lake. Ebenezer is 2.3 miles
south of Hwy. 64 on Beaver Creek Road (SR1008) on the east side of
Jordan Lake. Take the main park road to its end at the picnic area.
Bring a dish to share, plus your own plate, utensils, and drink. Let's
see how much we can recycle and how little trash we can leave behind! A
few members are bringing their kayaks along that will be available to
use, so come a little early if you're interested. We'll also be looking
for Whip-poor-wills at dusk. Join us!!

Below you'll see an email I received today about the Lights Out Program.
We CAN help make a difference for our birds!!! Happy birding! Karen
Bearden
Raleigh, NC

-COPY from NY Times.com--

City Lights, a Siren's Song for Birds, Are Dimmed

By PAM BELLUCK

CHICAGO, May 15 - The bejeweled nighttime skyline of the city is
sparkling a little less this spring.

 The lights on the roof of the giant Sears Tower have gone dark at
night. So has the distinctive crown of light atop the John Hancock
Center, the gracefully muscular skyscraper on Michigan Avenue,
Chicago's Champs-Élysées. And such prominent architectural icons as
the ornate Wrigley Building and the gothic Tribune Tower have
dimmed their lights, too.

 The point is to attract less attention at night - not from people,
but from birds. From the song sparrow to the hermit thrush to the
Baltimore oriole, birds migrating from the south in the spring and
from the north in the fall are attracted by the lights of
buildings, apparently confusing a light bulb with the stars that
they navigate by. And too often, ornithologists say, the birds
smash into the windows and wind up dead or seriously injured.

 "We think several hundred thousand birds a year die from striking
buildings in Chicago," said Suzanne Malek, deputy commissioner of
natural resources with the Chicago Department of the Environment.
Last fall, the city started a Lights Out program, asking building
owners to kill their ornamental lights during migration season,
roughly April to May and September to October. And so far, she
said, about 18 or 19 have complied.

 It is not just a Chicago problem, ornithologists point out.
Douglas F. Stotz, a conservation ecologist at the Field Museum
here, said scientists estimate that "100 million birds a year kill
themselves on man-made structures, mostly windows, but also TV
towers."

 And bird-lovers are getting busy in other places, too. In Toronto,
for instance, the Fatal Lights Awareness Program monitors bird
collisions at 40 downtown buildings and has persuaded many to turn
off their lights.

 In New York, the Empire State Building recently agreed to turn off
its spire of lights when someone from the Audubon Society calls to
warn that the weather conditions are cloudy or humid or otherwise
ripe for attracting migrating birds, said Lydia Ruth, a building
spokeswoman.

 And the World Trade Center has not only been dimming the orange
lights on its communications tower, it has put up netting on some
of its windows so birds will bounce off before hitting glass, said
Rebekah Creshkoff, a member of the Audubon Society. Ms. Creshkoff
began picking up dead birds from the World Trade Center and the
World Financial Center a few years ago. Last year, she said, the
tally was 690 dead and 305 injured birds, representing 68 different
species.

 She said the birds "enter a lit-up area, become reluctant to
leave, just like a moth to a porch light, and then toward morning
they drop down to whatever shrub or tree they can find, and then
they can crash into glass."

 In Chicago, the glass-and-steel towers studding the sky provide an
unfortunate target for birds passing through after a long flight
across Lake Michigan, especially on days when a "low ceiling" of
thick clouds makes birds fly closer to buildings, Mr. Stotz said.

 Over the years, buildings like the 100-story Hancock Center have
been lobbied by bird aficionados. In a 1969 lights-off campaign
against the Hancock, the staff of the Chicago Academy of Sciences
found some 400 dead birds around the building one morning, and the
academy's director, Dr. William Beecher, displayed 200 of them in
the academy's parking lot, classified by species - finch, tanager,
warbler.

 Nowadays, the Hancock Center is much more bird-sensitive and is
even getting an Audubon Society award this year.

 "I'll be honest with you," said John Kapp, the Hancock's general
manager. "The building is very much recognizable by that crown of
light, so it is very noticeable when it is off. We get calls all
the time: `The lights are off. Is there a problem?' "

 But, he said, by turning off the 624 light bulbs in the crown, "we
get the benefit of energy savings, as well as hopefully the birds
are headed in the right direction. How does it really hurt us?"

 Mr. Stotz says turning the lights off does make a difference. He
and colleagues at the Field Museum have spent 25 years monitoring
the bird traffic at a squat glass lakefront building that is part
of McCormick Place complex and have collected nearly 30,000 birds
of about 150 species, from the olive-colored oven bird to the
electric blue indigo bunting.

 A McCormick Place spokeswoman, Marilynn Kelly Gardner, said the
building staff was not aware of the Field Museum study or that dead
birds were a significant problem. And the scientists have never
asked McCormick Place to turn its lights off, partly because its
lights are not ornamental but are needed for conventions or
security, and partly because the museum values the chance to study
the birds it finds.

 The scientists have found that on nights when the building is
dark, or when thick curtains are drawn that keep the light in,
fewer birds die, Mr. Stotz said. One recent morning, for example,
weather conditions would probably have resulted in about 40 dead
birds, Mr. Stotz said, but because the lights were out and curtains
drawn, Mary Hennen, an assistant to Mr. Stotz, found only two
catbirds, a veery and a white crown sparrow.

 These days, Mr. Stotz is also asking architects renovating Soldier
Field, where the Chicago Bears play, to try to avoid lighting up a
large glass wall that is part of the new plans.

 "Ideally what you'd have," said Mr. Stotz, "is a completely dark
skyline so it wouldn't look like anything to the birds."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/16/national/16BIRD.html?ex=991037226&ei=1
&en=
d0cb04fe9239a6aa