This was the night that really started it all for Robbie Hunsinger, Founder of CBCM. Birds were literally falling out of the sky everywhere. She counted 80 dead birds in a very small area of the Loop that night. There were small flocks of dead birds strewn on the sidewalks. There were uncounted injured, disoriented and dead birds on every street downtown. It was well into September during Fall migration 2002 when this tragedy occurred.
The Chicago organization Lights Out was supposedly in effect during this time. Their mission was to get buildings to dim lights to reduce the risk of night migrating birds being drawn into buildings and crashing. As you will see, this program was simply not getting the job done.
All of the lights were on downtown that night, creating an extremely deadly course for the thousands of birds flying over. A monitoring colleague at the time had repeatedly called the head of Lights Out for two weeks prior to this night to ask them to get the buildings to turn out. He got no response. It was weeks into migration and weeks into the period that lights should have been out downtown.
Seeing all of those dead and injured birds affected Robbie deeply. The next
morning after being out at 4:30am monitoring birds, she came home in a horrified
state. She called the Lights Out people to try get assistance with reaching
managers, but they would not share any information with
her.. She was determined that
she not have another night like that one the next night, so she called BOMA
(the very helpful building owners & mangers assoc)to tell them what had happened,
and she got out the phone book and painstakingly found many managers downtown
and
urged
them
to
turn
the lights
out.
This was the beginning of CBCM's
light
reduction efforts.
Robbie was told by managers that the regular e-mail notices had not been sent out from Lights Out and that they did not know that it was migration. That next night the fatalities were reduced as several of the tallest buildings downtown did turn their rooftop lights out. It was an improvement, but most of the buildings downtown stayed on until CBCM very actively recruited them to join the cause.
CBCM now has 100% compliance in the Loop as buildings "Turn out for the Birds" every migration season, dimming rooftops, lobbies and many office windows as well.
It was late spring 2003 when the last holdout in the Loop turned their rooftop out for CBCM.. The managers do agreat job now in the Chicago area and CBCM is grateful!
Click Link below for Circling Birds footage
Watch for the small white specks at the top of the buildings.
These are birds disoriented and drawn to building lights. In the worst cases
-such as this night- they begin circling the buildings in an often terminal
pattern until they fall to the ground from exhaustion or injury.
Many ended
up on
the sidewalks
dazed, injured or dead and the living were then easy prey for gulls, crows
and sometimes janitors cleaning the sidewalks.
*NOTE: This movie is 556k.
It should stream rather than clog up your computer downloading.
