Each morning for more than a month, well before dawn, a pair of Mecklenburg Audubon Society volunteers has patrolled the sidewalks of uptown Charlotte. It is somber duty for bird lovers, because they’re collecting corpses.
Fall is when migratory birds wing their way south down one of the four broad flyways that span North America. Many fly at night, the moon and stars guiding them to ancient wintering grounds.
But eons of evolution never prepared birds for cities. The bright lights of tall buildings attract the migrants, which often crash into them or circle, confused, until they drop exhausted to the ground.
Millions of birds a year die that way, researchers calculate. That’s why Jill Palmer and fellow Audubon volunteer Sarah Linn walked Tryon Street, peering into niches and under shrubs, in the early morning dark Tuesday.
Continued: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/26/3556147/audubon-urging-uptown-skyscrapers.html
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