How to make NYC work better for its winged inhabitants
EARLY-RISING NEW YORKERS may spot an unusual patrol group in Manhattan this autumn. They sport sensible shoes, latex gloves and an armful of brown paper bags. As in spring, they comb the streets for migrating birds that have struck windows. They are Project Safe Flight volunteers, out to save the injured and count the dead.
It is a tough gig. Fruzsina Agocs saw her first yellow-billed cuckoo, a shy species that is hard to spot, dead on the pavement. “That was not the way I wanted to see it,” she says. But she is cautiously optimistic that she will have fewer such encounters in the future. In the past couple of years New York has moved to the forefront of a push to make cities more welcoming to their avian neighbours.
New York—like Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington—sits underneath the “Atlantic Flyway”, an ancient migration route travelled by millions of birds, from teeny warblers to long-legged shorebirds, every spring and autumn. Up to a quarter of a million of them die colliding with windows in New York every year, according to New York City Audubon, the bird charity that organises Project Flight Safe. Birds confuse reflections of sky or vegetation for the real thing and fly straight for them.
2023-10-26 07:35:33
Link from www.economist.com
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