From the Winter 2025 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now.
I’ve written before about the importance of inspiring people with hope, even when the odds appear tough. Fear is often easier in the short term, but hope is more enduring. In that vein, it’s such a pleasure to read in this issue about the changes that have been made to Chicago’s McCormick Place conference center to avoid a repeat of the huge bird-strike event that took place during the 2023 fall migration, when close to 1,000 birds were killed in a single night by a single building.
The solutions have been to turn out the lights at night and cover the windows of the convention center with a 2-inch grid of tiny stickers, giving birds a chance to see and avoid the glass. The impact has been immediate and enormous in terms of a reduction in the number of collisions. We have experienced the same effect here at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where relatively inexpensive changes to our windows have significantly reduced fatal bird collisions. It’s the sort of effect that has inspired communities across the country to champion bird-safe buildings.
To grow that success, we want to learn about what inspires people to seek out nature-positive solutions. At the Cornell Lab, we’re well known for our expertise in “science data,” and that remains the heart of our work, but we’re also interested in “people data”: what moves people’s heads and hearts. In the case of bird-friendly buildings, for instance, we’ve been running trials to find out what inspires people to take action: an emotional plea using images of dead birds; a logical case based on technical information about the effectiveness of potential solutions; conservation arguments about the impact of window collisions on bird populations; or a social call to action based on what neighbors and friends are doing. It turns out that, in the case of windows, the most powerful arguments are based on efficiency and cost: do these new solutions really work, and how much will I have to pay?
Will the same approach work for other conservation decisions? We don’t yet know, but it’s a question that has been on my mind as I watched—and listened to—fall migration over Cayuga Lake in Upstate New York. It’s humbling to see vast flights of birds as they depart the great boreal forests and tundra of the North and head to their homes in Central and South America. It’s also a vivid reminder of why migratory birds are so vulnerable to threats like building collisions; they now face growing risks at each stage of their extraordinary lives. And if my hope ever wanes, I can take solace in the words of a local hero. Near the shores of Cayuga Lake is the grave of Carl Sagan, the legendary Cornell University astronomy professor. In his epic book Pale Blue Dot, Sagan wrote one of the most evocative calls I know for valuing life on this planet, inspired by an image taken by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives … There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
