HomeMy WebLinkAboutAugust 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 YES! We Have
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S 9 1 °( 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
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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
COUNCILMAN
PAID
POLITICAL
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