August 21, 1980 - Nature and Man Create Perils for WildlifeAugust 21, 1980
Nature and Man Create Perils for Wildlife
Recently a young friend of mine had
stopped her car at an intersection when
someone came up from behind and ran
into her. There was no great damage, but
it brought to mind how many accidents
occur each day in our busy world.
So it is too, with the birds and animals
that live around us. Through natural
phenomena of storms, drought, hurri-
canes, and floods as well as man -made
interferences, the toll on our wildlife is
astronomical. Of the one hundred million
birds that migrate, only 40 million survive
the year's ordeal, due to these natural and
man -made obstacles.
Years ago, when Westhampton Air Base
was functioning as a military installation,
they would project a searchlight into the
air above to determine the height of the
cloud cover. To most, including myself,
this insignificant operation seemed of little
concern until one day, at the height of the
bird migration, I got a call from a
concerned birder. Breathlessly he explain-
ed there were thousands of dead birds
lying about the foot of the tower over at the
air base, would I come over and check?
Sure enough, he was not exaggerating.
Everywhere you looked on the ground
there were dead birds of all sorts. Warb-
lers of every description. Catbirds.
Thrashers. Robins. Doves. Even larger
birds, like the rails and whipoorwills, were
found. Possibly the birds were blinded or
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disoriented by the light and flew into the
high towers, where they were killed.
Windows Confuse Birds
Along our coast, lighthouses have this
same problem and dead birds sprinkled at
their bases are often proof of this. Also the
tall, lighted buildings of our cities, with
their ever - increasing use of glass in
today's architecture, add to these pro-
blems.
With woods on one side of our home and
the other side facing the beautiful farm-
We have an obligation
to try to correct
problems we have
unknowingly created so
that both man and bird
can live together
in harmony,
lands, we built our house so we could enjoy
the outdoors from the inside. And like so
many others, we used large picture
windows. Over the years this has created
problems for the birds. What happens is
they see the reflection of trees and woods
in the glass and in their winged world of
speed fly into the window. Sometimes this
proves fatal, particularly if hit head on,
but most often it is a glancing blow which
August 21, 1980
OVENBIRD - -This bird is usually found in the deep woods singing,
"Teacher- teacher - teacher ". The one you see above flew against our
picture window and was photographed before it was able to fly away.
Photo by Paul Stoutenburgh
merely stuns the bird or knocks it out
temporarily.
The best thing to do if you have a cat or
dog around is to pick up the bird in its
stunned condition and carefully move it to
an area of safety. Of course, if you don't
have any of the problems of cats and dogs,
leave it where it fell. Sooner or later it will
regain consciousness and will be able to fly
away! The ovenbird pictured here hit the
window and was dazed for a short time,
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but before I could put it in a safe place, it
flew off.
Birds Attack Reflections
What we do to cut down on these
occasional collisions with windows is keep
the drapes closed whenever possible.
Others have found that a silhouette of a
flying hawk on the window works well. I
know over at the National Seashore on
Fire Island, where they have a visitors'
information center made up almost entire-
,,
ly of glass, these SunWettes work well
there. I'm told Audubon sells them and
they go on the windows like a decal. Surely
anyone who has any feeling for our
feathered friends has the obligation to try
to prevent these catastrophes whenever
possible.
Many people have called me complain-
ing about birds continually attacking their
windows. Thi* is not flying into them but
literally attacking them. The problem here
is entirely different.'Here the bird attacks
the window when it sees its reflection. Any
bird having its territory around your house
particularly during the nesting season,
becomes a fierce aggressor. It will try to
drive out any of its kind, including its own
window reflection. And so the bird seeing
this batters away trying to get rid of its
competition. (Cardinals seem to be one of
the chief offenders.) The best thing to do to
discourage this annoyance is to put up a
screen or some other sort of covering as a
temporary measure. Usually later, when
the bird is involved with rearing its young,
it will be too busy to bother with intruders.
So we see that many of man's innova-
tions have caused the bird population to
suffer. As our world's population increases
and our land and waters become more and
more disturbed by man's technology andt
activities, we have an obligation to try to
correct these problems that we unknow-
ingly have created so that both man and
bird can live together in harmony.
PAULSTOUTENBURGH
SULLIVAN
for
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