Welcome.
>> Hello, everyone.
>> Hi.
Thank you.
>> All right.
So it is 12:01.
People are still filtering
in, but we're going to get started.
So welcome to today's
webinar on BirdCast, when and where birds
migrate and I
really want to thank everyone in our audience
for joining us
today.
Closed captioning is available.
If you click on the closed caption button
at the bottom of
your screen, you can turn those subtitles
on.
We are
streaming both within Zoom and on to the lab's
Facebook
page.
So we have two audiences tuning in today.
Which is
great.
It allows us to have a really broad reach
so we are
excited to have both audiences.
If you want to share the
webinar with other people who might not have
registered on
Zoom, my colleague is going to enter the Facebook
page into
the Zoom chat so you can send that over to
your friends and
family and they can join the webinar on Facebook.
So
today's webinar is the latest in a series
from the Cornell
lab of ornithology's visitor center.
We've been
highlighting mobile apps, citizen science
programs and
different projects.
Today's topic is BirdCast.
This is
between Cornell lab of ornithology, Colorado
State
University and university of Massachusetts
Amherst.
This
website is one you will want to check frequently.
Especially at the start and some places the
peak of
migration, which we will get into it throughout
the webinar.
BirdCast is short for bird forecast.
They are literally
forecasting the migratory movements of birds
on national
level.
So we will do some introductions.
There is three of us today and we will take
turns briefly
saying who we are.
Our role at the lab.
And I'm going to
kick it off.
So my name is Chelsea Benson.
I'm the public
program coordinator with the labs visitor's
center.
Which
means I'm an educator at heart.
And my job is to share the
lab's amazing resources with all of you that
are joining us
in our audience.
I really enjoy checking in on BirdCast.
Right now it is really exciting and I can't
wait for them to
share what they are seeing and predicting.
But I'm not intimately involved in the project.
So I'm just
here to facilitate the conversation with Adriaan
and Julia.
So Adriaan, you want to take it next and introduce
yourself?
>> Sure.
My name is Adriaan Dokter.
I'm a research
associate here at lab of ornithology.
I am mostly in
migration ecology.
I study a specific part of the life of
birds.
That's when they move around.
Each spring and each
fall.
I joined the lab about four years ago.
I have a
life-long interest in birds.
If you hear a little accent,
that's right.
I'm originally from the Netherlands.
I grew
up in a small city near Amsterdam.
Very happy to be in the
U.S. now and working with you, with my colleagues
here on
the BirdCast project.
>> Great, Julia?
>> Hi, everyone.
My name is Julia.
I'm a BirdCast project
leader.
I joined the lab at the beginning of the year.
I
primarily help to manage coordinate on the
ground
conversation effort used for test research
in order it
minimize.
I have a life-long animal lover but a pretty
Novemberity birder.
I come to the lab with a background in
government with particular interest in public
policy and
conservation.
>> Neat, thanks to you both for sharing that.
Before we get
too far into the webinar, I want to explain
to our audience
how the webinar works.
So in a moment, I'm going to kick
off with a series of questions to Adriaan
and Julia.
So
they can get us all on the same page about
what is BirdCast
and how it works and why there are conservation
efforts.
Then we will transition to questions from
the audience.
So
for our Zoom audience, if you have questions,
you can add
them to the Q&A button at the bottom of your
screen.
Some
of you have already figured out how to do
that.
You are so
Zoom savvy.
If you see a question you really want answered,
please click the thumb's up icon because that
will upvote
that question and will bring it to the top
so we see it.
We
can also type in our responses so we will
be periodically
answering questions.
When we type in a response it goes
into that answer column and you can check
there.
If you are joining us on Facebook, you can
add your comments
or questions to the Facebook comment box,
and I have
colleagues that are monitoring that and sharing
those
questions with us.
So please add your questions and we will
get to as many as you can.
If you are using the Zoom chat
we won't be answering questions from there,
but if you are
having technical difficulties, you can answer
this question
there and my colleagues will help you with
that.
So,
Adriaan, can you give us a big picture overview
of BirdCast?
What's the goal of the project and what are
you attempting
to do and why?
>> Yeah, so, very generally speaking, I would
say BirdCast
tries to give you sort of the best information
on a very
important part of the life of birds.
And their that is
their migrations.
Their migrations, they basically happen
mostly at night.
It is a two spectacle, so each season
there are billions of birds moving across
the country and
migrating over the continent.
But it is very hidden theme and almost 80%
of species
migrated at night and they also fly at very
high altitudes
so up to 10,000 feet high.
So you don't really see it and I
that I is one thing that we try do is to really
bring sort
of visualize and bring that information to
you so that we
can actually see these birds moving.
Now, I think radar and
weather radar, they can detect birds in the
night sky, it
doesn't matter whether it is day or night
so those tools,
those radars are very central part of our
methodology.
So I
think that on the other hand we also want
to do something
with this information and that is to use information
that we
have on migration of birds to make a difference
on the
ground.
And actually try to save some birds.
I think a
Julia, that is really where Julia's project
comes in and
maybe I can hand it over to her to tell us.
>> Yes.
Sure.
So like Adriaan was saying, in addition to
the goal of providing information on mass
migration of birds
at night, there is also the goal of using
that information
for conservation efforts or what we refer
to as science to
action, which is what I primarily focus on.
Since we know
more birds die during migration than any other
period in
their life, we need to be particular concerning
about
threats that occur during migration so the
idea is that if
we know where birds are going to be during
migration on a
night tonight basis, then we can communicate
that
information to the relevant stake holders
in advance of
these movements and dynamically mitigate hazards
that birds
might otherwise encounter and we can do so
in a very
targeted way that balances needs of and minimizes
disruptions to the stakeholders.
>> That's really interesting.
Thank you for sharing that.
Today we are talking a lot about radar maps
and forecasts
and other really visual things and I can see
a lot of
questions popping on about what do the color
of the maps
mean.
All that stuff is available on the BirdCast
website, which I
understand just got a brand-new look yesterday.
The latest and greatest for all our audience
to see the new
website.
So Adriaan, if you wouldn't mind sharing your
screen and walking us through what we are
looking at and
telling us what might be useful for our audience
when they
look at these maps.
>> Yeah.
Is this working ?
Can you see my screen?
>> Yes.
>> Yes.
So this is a perfect time, first of September,
migration starts to kick off a little bit.
The start of the
autumn.
We have a very nice, our website, has a redesign
with many people work very hard to have this
come out.
In a
very short amount of time.
And I kind of want to talk to you briefly
through all of the
different parts of this website.
And I would say there are three components
to the BirdCast
and that's what we call migration tools.
We have forecasts
you see here.
We have local migration alerts and live
migration apps and it goes in reverse order.
And starting
with height migration maps.
So maybe let's dive into a map
of last night.
So this is sort of our base information.
Where a lot of the
other information and other forecasts are
based on.
So what
you see in all these little green and red
dots on this map,
those are the weather radar stations of the
United States.
They are WSR.
Weather surveillance radars.
These are sort
of the same, the same radar you see when you
look at the
weather map or look at the weather on the
news.
This tracks
hurricanes and tornadoes.
And sort of like we sometimes
like to say, WSRs are also wildlife surveillance
radars.
It is not only weather that these radars see.
They also
detect birds, insects, a lot of any animal
that is moving
through the air when you pick up as well.
So we have all of the little dots which are
radar stations.
The green is when they are active.
Red is when they are
down.
Here you see in Louisiana, pointing out that
the radars in
Louisiana are down.
And this is where the hurricane past
last week.
And one of the radars got totally destroyed.
So
the damage was big.
And these are low in the migration
maps.
So you can play last night's migration and
you can
see what is happening in the night sky.
So radar sends out to a big pulse of radial,
same as
listening to radio on your radio but now it
is sort of a
pulse that we send out and that the radar
detects and can
you see where the birds are in the night sky.
You see a big and the intense of the colors
tells you how
many birds are in the sky.
And how many birds are migrating
while the arrows tell you the direction in
which they are
flying.
And by glueing together the radar offices
the whole U.S. can
you make the composite maps of migration.
So you will see
that it is sort of 20 minutes behind realtime.
You can
really follow what is happening in the night
sky.
So I see some questions coming by.
Actually, what do the
colors now mean?
And maybe I can spend one word about this,
here you see these colors are sort of yellow.
And you can
read here on the scale what that means.
So there is about
5.
And thousands per kilometer per hour.
What that means
is that if you would draw a line on the ground
here of about
1 kilometer wide, and you would wait for one
hour and you
count all of the birds that they are flying
over that one
kilometer line that you drew on the ground,
up above you and
over the night sky, that would give you the
number of birds
that are passing.
In this case, 5,000 birds per kilometer
per hour.
If you look at the yellow blob, it is about
500 kilometers.
So 500 times 5,000 is like, it is 250,000
birds per hour.
So it really gives you a way to also put a
number on it and
to quantify how many birds are migrating through
the night
sky.
And these radars have been running almost
20 years.
25
years is when the radar network was built.
And we have a
lot of these historical data and a lot of
the historical
maps.
So sort of a second major component in the
second
migration tool is sort of the forecast that
you see at the
beginning of the website and sort of the same
colors and
these forecasts tell you sort of, not what
is happening
right now or what has happened in the sky
but they tell you
in advance what we expect for migration to
happen.
So this
for the night of tomorrow, the second video
is for the day
after tomorrow.
And third night is, I'm excited about this
night, especially if you live in the midwest,
you see this
huge bright spot here in the night on the
3rd of
September.
And so to give you a bit of an insight of
how
this works is we have sort of basically these
models are
built on top of a weather model that tells
you how warm it
is going to be.
Whether the winds are and speed and
directions of the wind.
And birds are super sensitive to
these conditions.
They sort of are really clever.
They fly when they have good tail winds so
they can track
efficiently.
We have weather maps and observed bird
migration that we detect through the radar.
And for 20
years we sort of let the computer look at
what weather
patterns are associated with which bird migration
patterns.
Then we have sort of this machine leash learning
model to
predict in advance how many birds are migrating.
So you
take the weather forecast.
We know winds and temperatures.
We give that to the prediction model and then
we produce
this map of when and where birds are migrating.
So it is
really built on top of weather model and that
allows to make
the forecasts because the computer has learned
which weather
conditions are associated with strong migration
of birds.
I'm talking a lot here.
>> Adriaan, I have a question in the Q&A.
Why in the maps
are there some black areas?
>> Oh, yeah.
>> What's that mean?
>> So that happens.
Like typically is, this is for example,
this is simply no migration can be it.
Or for example it is
raining.
When it is raining, birds don't fly through
areas
of rain.
But to be honest, we can't see birds through
rain.
When it
is raining, the station sees no birds any
more and it blacks
out.
So there is either no birds or often when
you see sort
of limited area, it is sort of heavy Thunderstorm
moving
through the area and therefore the radar doesn't
see any
birds any more.
>> Cool.
Also people are wondering how do you separate
from
birds or other biological things like insects
and bats and
things?
How do we know that it is birds that you are
seeing
on those maps?
>> Right.
Oh, yeah.
This is very good question.
So it has been a very long discussion and
also in
meteorologists and people in the radar.
And we in the past
didn't know what they were.
So we are very learned that
especially at night there's very strong, yeah,
evidence that
blocks that you see are dominated by birds.
And so there
are two options.
It is very clear from the signatures of
radar that it is biological and one of the
main challenges
we have is birds or is it insects?
And at night it is really dominant to the
birds.
And can
you see that for example on the speed, if
you compare the
speeds of the radar also the speed of the
birds, and if you
compared it to the wind for example, you see
targets are for
the speed of 15 meters per second or like
30 or
40 kilometers per hour.
And sometimes even like 60 or
70 miles an hour.
You can still see it with the own speed
relative to the wind.
And if it is like 50 meters per
second, that's much faster than insects could
ever fly.
That's how we really sure that these are birds.
And not
something else.
>> Very cool.
>> I'm also wondering and I think it is part
of your new
website.
Maybe you can show us, like the upper midwest
will
have a really hot migration night in September
3?
Like how,
if people -- like how can people look -- yeah,
they can look
at map, but I think there is an alert can
you get for a hot
spot for migration?
Is that op their website?
>> Yeah, that's right.
So if you want to Zoom in for
example, this is the first time you see in
the midwest, near
Chicago, it is super hot.
So say if you live in certain
city and I will open in Chicago for example.
And then you want to know, what the migration
where it is
going to be.
And can you get a summary of those maps
specific for your location.
For upcoming three nights.
And
so tonight is not going to be very interesting
there in
Chicago, very low.
Winds are picking up.
And especially
Thursday you see very high numbers of birds
that are
predicted to move through this area.
So this you can use to
sort of zoom in to your specific city and
see what the
forecast.
Of course we can use that forecast to many
-- yeah.
To make a difference I think and I think this
is a big thing
and when I give a shout out also to Benjamin
and Kyle, both
collaborators here at the BirdCast project,
who spent time
in generating the forecasts.
And I think it really changes
the game a little bit.
That we are able to make a forecast,
makes also that you can potentially change
something or we
as humans can change what we do to be able
to make these
birds travel safely through the night sky.
As Julia said,
we know migration is one of the most dangerous
periods in
the life of a bird and we want to make sure
that they
continue to do so.
>> I think that Julia, if you would speak
a little bit more
about to maybe the bird watchers in this audience.
If they
are looking at the maps, do you have any tips
for them as
they are thinking about going birding ?
>> Yeah.
This is something I'm interested in at the
moment.
To become a better birder.
What you want to do here is go
to the forecast maps we just checked out.
And take a look
at the keys.
And basically you want to be looking for high
migration but not only high migration because
that doesn't
necessarily indicate an excellent day of birding
so much as
birds passing overhead but optimally high
migration
intersecting with our lines.
When those intersect you might
see migration fallout and an abundance of
birds in one area
the next morning.
>> That's a really good tip.
So combine the radar with your own weather
forecast --
>> Oh, well, sorry to clarify, precip lines
are already
marked on the forecast.
So you just have to check out where
the little gray and white lines are.
>> Oh that's right.
I did see those gray and white circular
lines.
So that's precipitation.
So you looking from where
it intersects?
>> Yes.
With the brighter areas on the map that indicate
migration.
>> I think Adriaan will show us.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> A little clarity.
>> That's why I love this.
It is super visual.
So sharing
this so people know exactly how to use the
tools is great.
>> Here you see the indication of high or
moderate or light
for precipitation.
And you also bring these observations
and precipitation in the live maps but yeah,
I have --
[ Inaudible ]
I think it is important also when you look
at a live map for
example, the radar show is you when there
is a lot of birds
in the air, right?
And that can mean two things.
Like
either all of the bird are leaving from your
area or they
are all coming towards your area.
And if you look at the
live maps, can you sometimes see that.
That is maybe if you
see a lot of birds leaving early in the night
and a weeding
things out in the night, maybe there wasn't
that much of a
loss of birds.
But it there is a huge pulse and it continues
through the
whole night and there is a big chance that
there is going to
be a lot of birds arriving, then I get excited.
>> Yeah, so true.
So Adriaan, can you tell us a little bit about
what you have
learned as you have been studying these bird
migrations with
radar and forecast?
Like what are some of the scientists
specific discoveries that your team has made?
>> Yeah, so there is a lot.
And I think one thing I've been
interested in is also like how, is there any
change over
time.
And I think that's a unique opportunity we
have with
radar data.
They go back 25 years.
And so you might think,
why didn't we do this ten years ago.
Because like, it is
just maybe the internet resolution and the
fact that so many
computers now and so easy the radar dates
is huge and you
need huge computation and huge storage to
actually process
and analyze this data.
And that's the day and age that is
easier.
And that makes so much progress.
So one of the
things that I have worked on,.
--
[ Inaudible ]
And a little sad story.
If do you that every year, and you
count how many birds have flown over any area
in the U.S.,
you can see that there is, yeah, that a decline
of about a
percent per year.
And so since about over 10% loss of the
number of migrants and of course it is very,
that's a
worrying thing, like I think that the radar
and weather
radar, mostly common birds we are detecting
with the radar.
And because radar detects almost like the
number of kilo
grams that pass through.
You don't see individual birds or
don't see any species.
It is a net we are measuring.
That was a big surprise.
And you combine that with -- a lot
of people heard about the 3 billion birds
that were lost.
That's part of that same study where we look
at the decline
of birds.
And another thing that is very interesting
is
that we also learned like what is the real
power of radar
data that you can put a number to it?
How many birds are
moving out of the U.S.?
We made a wild guess but it was
hard to put a number on it and now we can
do that.
We can
see for example how many birds are flying
to south America
and leaving the U.S., then the next spring,
how many birds
are coming back.
You will see there are fewer birds coming
back.
Because they live for half a year.
They have been
dying.
So there's always mortality.
It is compared between spring
and fall allows us to look into when and which
numbers are
birds dying and which numbers, which years
are successful
breeding years because we see lots of birds
coming back.
So
these things are exciting to be able to look
at and I think
also what is unique is we now have this really
large
overview of the whole continent.
So we see these biomass
flows of birds coming in through the center
of the country
and then in the fall like sort of take this
more easterly
route, more through the northeast and sort
of these routes
of the birds are not the same in spring and
fall.
And also
important if you think about how the high
gracing flows
intersect like cities and start to pinpoint
what are the
areas and what are the times of the year when
birds migrate
through our cities and areas where humans
live and when we
potentially have the biggest impact on them
and might be
able to influence them.
>> Yeah.
I just want to clarify one point.
So you are
saying the fall and spring migration routes
can differ.
>> Yeah.
For most species.
>> That is something that might be surprising
for people.
>> Yeah.
Yeah, so if you think about spring, the real
highway through
the U.S. is sort of through Texas all wait
through the
midwest.
And then the reason they fly there is they
are
very good southerly winds typically in this
area.
So they
are very clever.
They have free rides.
So they go through the center.
And
then in the autumn it is different.
And then the winds are
opposing winds and that is not so great any
more.
I think
that the reason they shift towards the east.
And maybe also food.
There is more green in the east and
young birds.
And also why we see these patterns are up
for
debate.
It is very clear that it shifts in the fall.
>> That's really interesting.
I want to ask Julia a lot of questions about
the
conservation efforts.
But before I do, we have quite a few people
from outside of
the United States joining us, like from within
Canada and
central and south America.
I'm getting a lot of questions
like why is
the map so U.S.-specific?
Julia, or Adriaan?
>> Yeah, like one of the reasons is that I
would love to
also see birds and radar data from Canada.
But we are simply not there yet.
And the reason is maybe
two-fold.
Like a lost countries and the U.S. is very
quick with
opening up all of their data and public data
by the
government so we can do this work.
It is very important.
All of this data is freely available now and
that's why we
can do these things.
Other countries are moving in that
direction.
But it is not always so easy to get access
to the data.
That's one reason.
Another reason is that Canada has
different types of radar.
So they are operating in a
different wave length and there are little
differences.
And
our methods, yeah, we are still working on
getting our
methods and also it is different types of
radar expanding
north.
We are talking to environment Canada and people
there and yeah, I think a lot of people in
Canada are also
very excited about seeing it happen also for
Canada.
And it
is on our list of things to do and I can't
give you any
exact time line.
>> Oh, shucks.
Well, luckily, it is great to have 
that collaboration.
But we also understand that the technology
is different.
And you have to establish these relationships
with a lot of
agencies to be able to do that.
So I'm glad to hear it is a
work in progress.
And that is exciting.
>> And also it is happening not only in the
U.S., it is also
in Europe.
That's where I worked a lot in the past.
And
with the collaboration and in Europe even
like 50 countries
where you have to work and it is real challenge
because
there are all these differences between countries
and in a
sense we are blessed in the U.S. with such
a huge country
and so many radars and all the same that makes
life easier.
And secretly, a little reason why I would
do research now in
the U.S.
>> Can you get some good radar.
I hear ya.
So Julia, lots
and lots of people are asking about conservation
efforts.
So with all these birds migrating, what can
we do?
So if
can you talk about the Lights Out campaign
and other
conservation efforts, that would be wonderful.
>> Sure.
It ties back to the idea that the most dangerous
part of a bird's life is migration.
In order to react to
that and safeguard changing habitats and avoiding
organisms
like birds we need more complex and creative
approaches than
previous static solutions we've tried.
So one of the
historical challenges in implementing solutions
has been the
needs of stakeholders which are often diverse
and
conflicting over the extended periods that
birds are
migrating during spring and fall because that's
a period of
around three months and a lot of people, even
if they are
willing to help don't help for that entire
period.
So now
our research provides us this unique opportunity
to target
effective action in a relatively small window.
Approximately 3 to 4.5 billion birds that
migrate over the
U.S. annually each spring and fall about half
of them
migrate in a pretty narrow window.
Often less than two
weeks in duration and furthermore, there is
a few nights
when this period that exhibit the most intense
movements and
our migration forecast can predict those.
So using those
predictions we can mitigate some of these
threats.
Some
threats are light pollution, wind mills, and
if we can alert
stakeholders, then it could be like, hey,
maybe turn off
your lights this night.
Maybe set your wind mills here or
turn them off this night.
We can give information to
airplanes and be like, hey, this is a flock
of birds, maybe
you don't want to fly into them tonight.
That allows us to
react in realtime to these threats.
So so the lab is involved in Lights Out Texas
that we just
began earlier this year.
And that is to address the light
pollution component of migration threats.
Light pollution,
especially in and around cities where light
from buildings
and other structures disorients migration,
it can cause
death.
Here in the U.S. up to an estimated billion
birds
Diane you'llly in building strikes and light
pollution it
implicated in some of that.
So of the myriad of threats
that birds are facing, this has a pretty simple
solution.
Just turn off the lights when birds are flying
by.
But it is a simple solution with a big impact
so we are
trying to get the word out to people so they
know when to
help.
We focus our efforts in Texas as a tone to
particular
great risk and great conservation opportunities
due to an
intersection of enormous bird migration and
intense light
pollution.
So about 1 out of every 3 birds that migrate
through the U.S. passes through Texas.
And this amounts to
an enormous volume of about a billion birds
with half of
that movement happening in just 19 days on
average and in
terms of light pollution risk, 3 of the top
10 ranked cities
for exposing birds to hazards of light pollution
are in
Texas, unfortunately.
Houston and Dallas ranking number 2
and 3.
San Antonio, number 7.
And so we really want to let them know, hey,
these are when
birds are coming by.
This is when can you turn off your
lights to protect them.
>> So you're focusing on Texas because of
it is such a hot
spot for migration.
But you said you can sign up for an alert
but only for those
regions, right?
>> Yeah, currently.
>> Are there any other cities you are hoping
to partner with
or what's the outlook for your campaign?
>> Sure.
So on a broader scale, Lights Out has been
on a broader
scale across the country for decades.
Starting in Canada
and now there are about 30 campaigns in different
U.S.
cities.
Previously, there wasn't much in Texas, which
is another
reason we are focused on Texas.
But there are other Lights Out campaigns across
the country
to better coordinate.
We are hopeful that by the end of
this that this is just mass alerts and migration
information
to everyone in the country, really.
So we can protect birds
on country wide continental scale.
And so right now, what
we are beginning with in Texas is alerts that
go out to
people in Houston and Dallas.
So we previously, I believe
Adriaan was screen sharing our alerts page,
and that's the
general migration alerts view of it.
There is also a Lights
Out view of it, a different link which you
can reach from
our science to action page in Houston Dallas
I letters with
particular Houston Dallas, Texas information.
When you go
on there, there is a little subscribe button
so can you
subscribe to e-mail notifications of when
a high alert is
activated and so when that happens we recommend
that you
turn off your lights.
It is, of course, optimal if everyone
can turn off their lights throughout migration
but we
recognize that's not always possible.
If you just want to
be e-mail notified of when there is a key
migration night
then we can do that for new Houston and Dallas.
We are
looking to do that outwards in the next couple
migration
seasons.
>> That's cool.
I'm think back to when you shows us the map
for like your city alerts for peak migration.
We don't have
an e-mail notification system for that yet.
But if you are checking into see what is happening
in your
area, and you are like oh, you know, when
we looked at
Chicago, like the 3rd is going to be just
a really big
night for migration, like if you're in that
area, it makes
sense to take your own personal action it
turn off lights
and let others know.
So really powerful tool.
This is a brand-new video produced
for the Lights Out campaign that Julia and
her team worked
on.
I'm going to play that.
This will take me a second.
My screen sharing is a little
slow.
Not for lack of technology.
It is personal.
I'm
slow.
>> Awesome.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah.
I just realized that while that was playing,
I
don't think people could hear the audio.
But they could see it.
>> Oh, really?
>> Yeah.
>> The audio sounds so pretty.
But for all of you asking about a link to
the video.
Oh,
they could hear it.
Okay, good.
>> Oh, good.
>> And to address the choppiness on Facebook,
if there were
any lag issues for any of you, there was for
me, this
videoant with a been publicly posted yet.
We are launching
it on Friday.
This is a preview.
But it'll be shared on our lab's Facebook
page on Friday and
we would be more than happy to see you share
that
information then.
>> That's awesome.
Great.
Thank you for sharing that with
us.
So I'm thinking about, you know, this is like
the
Lights Out is definitely a big part of protecting
birds as
they come through cities and other urban environments.
That
video highlights how much window strikes come
into play for
migrating birds.
Are there other efforts that people can make
either
themselves on a personal level, like at their
homes, or like
on a broader level?
I know from like a larger scale, like
what are some things that can be done to protect
migrating
birds?
>> On a personal level, the most obvious one,
my ask is that
you turn off your lights during migration.
Particularly
during nights of peak migration.
That can involve outdoor
lights.
That can involve just drawing blinds to block
out
indoor lights.
That sort of thing.
But start with turning out your lights.
Beyond that, you
know, we would love to see you asking people
in your cities
wherever you live, telling your neighbors,
telling city
officials, building managers, that this is
an issue that you
care about.
Essentially the more public pressure, the
more
that people respond to these campaigns and
take action.
So there are Lights Out campaigns.
They are in Texas right
now.
There are other Lights Out campaigns on our
website.
Can you check them out and connect with a
local campaign in
your area.
They will often have things that you can
participate in like collision monitoring so
we can gather
more data about this problem.
And if there's no effort in
your area, you know, can you reach out back
to us and we
would be more than happy to help connect you
to the
resources to start something in your area.
Because we want
to see this grow as much as we can.
>> Thank you.
I think we are going to start transitioning
into some of our Q&A.
We have a ton.
Which is awesome.
So
great to see everybody asking questions and
thinking deeply
on this topic.
One thing that comes up a lot is there's a
lot of species specific questions.
I know, like you said, Adriaan, is how many
birds migrate at
once.
And we are not narrowing down on a certain
specific
species of bird and its timing or pathway,
necessarily.
Could you share with our audience how they
might share that
information?
That might be useful for them.
>> Sure.
Yeah.
I think one important other resource, and
BirdCast as you
said, is like for the relationship with weather
and when
birds are migrating and it is fairly unpredictable
thing.
So short term of when there is moy gracing
and if you are
interested in a species and species specific
roots, there is
another lab project, and they own a webinar
series, it is a
cool project, too.
Let me pull it up for a second.
And share my screen.
Wait, where am I?
>> It's not as easy as it should be, right?
>> So just go to ebird.org.
The great tool for ebird is a
plot form to collect science data.
Look at BirdCast and go
out, observe your birds and sub met them to
ebird and that
information helps us enormously in understanding
what is
happening to these birds.
Where they are, what their
population trends are.
Here is a big list of species that can you
go through on the
ebird trends page.
I have to find a good one.
Like the barn swallow for
example.
And if you go there, then you can see abundance
mapes.
There is also abundance animation can you
click.
And it
tells you, it extend into south America.
Where are these birds migrating through?
Can you see the
areas of when and where they are.
That gives you a good
clue.
If you have seen something and whether that
is a bird
that's out of range or does it actually make
sense, this is
a good reference to put your observations
into process.
People submit their observations through ebird
and it makes
a difference.
So use that BirdCast and then go ebirding.
>> Yeah.
That's one of the things that, you know, as
somebody that works at the lab, that I really
love about
working at the lab of ornithology, is that
while we might
have separate projects and programs, they
often feed into
each other.
There is a little bit, you know, like BirdCast
is helping in this way and ebird can feed
in that way.
We
are getting a holistic look at birds.
Through lots of perspectives.
That's exciting.
Thank you
for share the trends.
If you are in the audience and have
you lots of species specific questions, I
really encourage
you to use that web page because it is very
valuable tool to
think about where their migration pathways
are.
Where they are overwintering and where their
breeding
grounds are.
It is a cool look at individual species.
Coming through for us, a lot of people might
have been
surprised that birds migrate at night.
We often think of, we see Canada geese for
example.
We see
them flying in a V during the day.
But from what you are saying the bulk of birds
migrate at
night.
Can you talk more about night migration?
>> Yeah.
Even Canada geese migrate at night.
But we were hardly aware of it.
They are flying super high.
And you don't notice anything.
One fun thing to do, can you
go out at night, if you have a good migration
night, I would
encourage you to go out one night and listen
carefully and
the song birds make little chip notes.
You can hardly hear
it, but it is like chip.
On a good night you will hear a
lot of little chips.
That is a fun thing to do and some
colleagues are working on recognizing on which
species the
chip notes are.
And going back to your question about night
migration, there
are reasons why birds are doing that.
One important is it
is an efficient way of spending your time.
Can you to fuel
your migration.
You have to forage during the day and then
have the night time free to migrate.
Because they cannot
forage at night.
Also, there are fewer predators.
You have a lot of cues,
which you can see the stars and moon which
birds use to
determine where they are and where they have
go.
It is more
information rich at night to know where they
are going.
So I think the right question is actually
why are we seeing
birds migrating during the day.
>> Flip the question.
I like that.
>> Yeah, people are asking, so if they are
migrating at
night, what are they doing during the day.
Sounds like you
are saying, rest.
And it takes a lot of energy to migrate.
So they are foraging and restocking their
energy.
That
makes a lot of sense.
>> Yeah.
And it is much more dangerous during the day.
So
migrating at night is more safe as well.
>> Julia, this question came up and I'm hoping
you will be
able to answer it.
Why are birds attracted to the light in
cities?
If they are migrating through at night and
get
super disoriented by the light, what's going
on there?
>> It is still a question we are treeing to
answer to some
degree.
But essentially as Adriaan was talking about
earlier, birds
use natural light signals to navigate.
The stars and moon
are helpful indicators for them.
When they see artificial
light it confuses them and draws them in as
insects are
drawn in.
So we have seen for instance the 9/11 tribute
and
light in New York city, if you are familiar
with that, these
giant light beams birds get caught up in them
and circle
endlessly rather than migrating through.
They are pulled
off their path a little bit and they end up
caught in light
and not necessarily where they were meant
to be.
So what
oftens happens then is birds who are distracted,
confused
and potentially exhausted will settle in and
face urban
threats when they fly out again in the morning.
>> Yeah, we like the radar base show there
is just many more
birds than you would expect in urban areas.
They are not
the best habitat.
Especially happens in the fall.
Maybe
young birds that are naive are thrown into
the areas where
it may not be the best area for them.
An extreme example is New York city.
Which is central park,
a nice habitat for the area.
But there are an enormous amount of birds
there surrounded
by this desert of concrete where they have
nowhere to go.
So birds are coming in then only one place
to good and
that's to central park.
It is one of the best places to see birds,
mainly because of
that effect.
>> The problem of bird strikes in urban air
yes, sir also
underappreciated to a great degree, it is
not visible to
people.
A lot of birds that collide with windows are
in
upper stories or early morning or at night
and are swept
away by cleaning crews very early in the morning
or taken by
predators.
So a lot of time you're not seeing the true
devastation that occurs.
>> I think that some people are asking to
revisit like what
the other threats are during migration.
Sometimes birds die of natural causes.
It is a long
journey.
Maybe sick, injured, not getting enough food.
People are asking how does draught affect
migrating birds.
And fire.
Those things are happening across the United
States.
So there are natural things that impact birds
as
they migrate.
And lot of human named structures we are talking
about.
I see the question coming up a lot and we
are not experts
but people want know about wind turbines on
migration.
Yes,
there are strikes on wind turbines.
But with BirdCast you can see that when they
are coming
through.
So you can see information to inform people,
oh,
there's a big migration coming through right
where the
turbines are.
Can you shut them off for this period of
time?
>> Essentially, yes.
This is both informing where we site
wind turbines and reacting in realtime of
the bird
migration, that does happen, yes.
But it is important to note, because we often
do get
questions about wind turbines is that while
we discuss wind
turbines a lot, collisions with infrastructure
in urban
cities happens a lot more.
>> Where you have your biggest impact is buildings
with
lights.
>> Yes.
In terms of estimated annual mortality from
collision to birds, wind turbine number is
around 350,000 a
year.
Where as buildings are around 340 million
a year.
>> >>: There is also still a lot of uncertainty
we don't
know.
For example, above the ocean and it is very
hard to
quantify when birds die and then taken away
by prey.
All
these little things that add together and
why we see
migratory birds are not doing too great.
Particularly
declining more than other species that are
less reliant on
immigration.
So there is an opportunity there.
A great
thing is birds like to migrate when there
is not so much
wind.
They don't like to migrate in very strong
winds.
So nice
calm nights is when the bulk of migration
happens and it is
not so costly to turn off a whipped farm because
there is
not so much power to be made.
Of course they will take a
long time because they need wind migration
and I do think
there is a possibility there and to do it
more smart.
>> I want to emphasize also that turning off
your lights at
home, while it may not feel like a lot, it
is an impactful
action to take.
Residences account for some 52 million bird
collision easier.
That's not an insignificant number.
So
turning off your lights at home is going to
matter.
>> And your windows also.
Birds collide during the day.
It
continues during the day.
So making your windows safe is
another thing.
>> Yeah, and I think that maybe my colleagues
on the adding
some information into the chat and on Facebook,
we do have
some links about how to reduce window strikes,
in addition
to turning off light at night, at your home
or office, if
you are lucky or unlucky enough to not work
at an office
right now.
Many of us are remote.
But there is a lot of great action steps that
people can
take.
I want to be cognizant of time.
It is 12:59.
I love
BirdCast gives us a lot of great insights
into what is
happening in the natural world.
In a way that maybe most
people wouldn't have thought about before.
Using radar to
capture these migrations and to inform policy
about Lights
Out and things like that.
I encourage all of our audience
to go to the BirdCast website and really explore
it and
learn how to use it for their own birding
or action to take
on their own homes.
I think that's a powerful tool.
So I
want to thank Adriaan and Julia for joining
us.
It was really fun chatting with you guyes.
>> Yeah.
>> This was great.
>> Was really great.
And I feel like I just learned a lot
so I hope our audience learned a lot too.
I also realize we
did not even put a dip in the bucket of questions.
Sorry,
audience on Zoom and on Facebook.
If you didn't get your
question answered.
You can send questions to us still.
So
you can send them to Cornellbirds @cornelledu.
And BirdCast
has a Twitter account.
So you can tweet @dr.
BirdCast.
I'm assuming that goes to you, dr.
>> Dr. BirdCast.
I'm not only on BirdCast.?
So their team can help answer
question owns Twitter or e-mail.
If you are on Zoom, you
will get a follow-up from me later with the
recording to
this and information about where to look on
the websites and
e-mail addresses and all that contact information.
And also
don't forget the website, BirdCast.info.
That's our show
for today.
I want to thank everyone for joining us.
I hope
you are checking out the BirdCast forecast
maps throughout
this migration season.
Thanks again.
And happy birding,
everyone.
>> Happy birding.
>> Bye.
>> Thank you.
