Flip Your Lights Out to Defend Migratory Birds
In October 2020, as much as 1,500 birds collided with brightly illuminated skyscrapers in Philadelphia over a single night time. It was the peak of migration season, and useless birds lined the streets within the early morning hours. Some have been discovered injured. Now, Lights Out, a new short film by the photographer and filmmaker Mike Fernandez, follows Keith Russell, the Program Supervisor for City Conservation at Audubon Pennsylvania, and Stephen Maciejewski, a volunteer on the Mid-Atlantic Audubon, as they race to guard town’s birds.
Russell and Maciejewski monitor injured and useless birds in downtown Philadelphia is a part of Bird Safe Philly, a collaboration between the Academy of Pure Sciences of Drexel College, Audubon Mid-Atlantic, Delaware Valley Ornithological Membership, the Nationwide Audubon Society, Valley Forge Audubon Society, and Wyncote Audubon Society. Many of those preventable deaths and accidents are attributable to constructing collisions, with the birds being disorientation by reflections and vivid lights.
In the course of the spring and fall migratory seasons, Fowl Secure Philly encourages town to show off or block out their lights as a part of a voluntary program referred to as Lights Out. Constructing house owners, tenants, residents, and companies are all welcome to take part. From 5:30 PM to eight:00 AM, Russell and Maciejewski might be discovered across the metropolis, checking buildings for doable collisions.
In circumstances the place the birds are alive, they create them to rehabilitation for care and restoration. The our bodies of birds who’ve died go to the Academy of Pure Sciences, the place they’ll then be a part of the scientific assortment of the ornithology division. The knowledge surrounding their lives and deaths will proceed to be studied for years in hopes of defending future generations of birds.
As much as a billion birds are killed yearly in the US as a consequence of constructing collisions. The work being performed by Russell, Maciejewski, and the Fowl Secure Philly staff gives a possible path ahead. Turning out our blocking our lights at night time is one easy factor we are able to all do to stop mass collision occasions sooner or later, whether or not we stay or work in a skyscraper or a single-story constructing.
In Philadelphia, Lights Out is going on now and runs by way of November fifteenth, 2023.
The Academy of Pure Sciences of Drexel College. Lights Out archival and different birds.
All photographs © Mike Fernandez
Additional studying:
• Wild Fowl Fund in NYC Works Across the Clock to Rescue Animals
• Tragic Pictures Goal to Increase Consciousness About Fowl Fatalities
• This Photographer Fell in Love with Her Native Birdlife. Then the Pesticides Got here.