Joe Tarr
One of two warblers found dead next to UW-Madison’s Ogg Hall on Oct. 8.
Christina Ciano and Kate Dike walk the perimeter of Ogg Hall, a dorm at Dayton and Park streets, pulling brush back from the side of the building and scanning the ground.
They’re nature lovers searching for birds, but they’re really hoping they don’t find any this morning. The volunteers are part of a weeks-long survey of UW-Madison’s buildings, documenting birds that have flown into windows, injuring or killing themselves.
It’s the second of two buildings they’re checking this morning and so far, they haven’t found any dead birds. “It’s more typical that we don’t find any,” Dike says.
No such luck today. Ogg Hall is an odd H-shape structure largely made of glass. While searching inside one of its isolated, unused courtyards, Dike spots two dead warblers lying just inches apart. “We have never found two next to each other, ever,” she remarks.
They photograph and bag the migratory songbirds and upload details about where and when they were found to the iNaturalist smartphone app. A few minutes later on the other side of the building, they find another dead bird, which they believe is a junco.
“What I was surprised to find is, psychologically, it’s pretty hard to do this study because you’re often finding birds that just died, their bodies still warm,” Dike says.
Sometimes they’ve witnessed a bird’s death, Ciano adds. One day while checking the Kohl Center — a particularly treacherous building for birds — they heard a thump and found a dead scarlet tanager. “It was such a beautiful bird. Just stunning. Broke its neck,” Ciano says. “We’re accustomed to a lot of wildlife not surviving, but it can still take a toll.”
The survey began two years ago after Aaron Williams, a planner at UW-Madison, approached the Madison Audubon Society about ways that the university could prevent bird deaths.
“It’s a really big problem,” explains Matt Reetz, executive director of the Madison Audubon. “There are estimates that windows in the U.S. alone kill almost 1 billion birds a year. It’s particularly a problem during spring and fall migration when birds are moving in large numbers.”
So the Audubon helped organize a survey that began last year — conducted for several weeks in both the spring and fall — to try to determine which buildings are claiming the most birds. The project has discovered a lot of dead birds, but not always where the organizers expected. Some buildings are more hazardous than others.
“Birds have a lot of things working against them: climate change, feral cats, habitat loss, pollution,” Reetz says. “[Building design] is a big problem but it’s such a solvable problem. We can actually make some really great improvements that benefit birds.”
Decals affixed to windows and improved landscaping, both inside and outside of windows, are low-tech ways to help birds distinguish glass from open sky. In new buildings, high-tech glass that emits ultraviolet light that birds can see (but humans can’t) can be installed.
Not all of the birds that Ciano and Dike have found are dead. Some were merely stunned and after a few minutes resting in a dark shoe box that the volunteers carry with them, the birds were able to fly away. Other casualties have been taken to the Dane County Humane Society Wildlife Center for medical care.
Such was the case with a gray-cheeked thrush they found near the LaBahn Arena a few weeks ago. “It was on the ground. Someone could have easily walked on it,” Ciano says. “Its eyes were tight, it was stunned. The bird pretty much just shut down.”
“A number of them are stunned and after 20 minutes, they fly away,” Dike says. “This one didn’t. We watched it for over an hour. It turned out to have a fractured shoulder.”
But after healing up at the Wildlife Center, the thrush was released and flew away.
Survey results spring 2018: Six weeks, 30 volunteers, 14 buildings, 54 bird collisions*,
29 species
Fall 2018: Seven-and-a-half weeks, 32 volunteers, 13 buildings, 120 bird collisions, 38 species
Spring 2019: Nine weeks, 30 volunteers, 15 buildings, 68 bird collisions, 35 species
So far this fall (survey ends Nov. 1): 31 volunteers, 15 buildings, 70 collisions, at least 24 species
Largest bird found in survey: Turkey that died hitting UW’s Microbial Sciences Building.
Birds not found yet in survey: crows, raptors, waterfowl
* Includes dead and injured.
