By Devin Nunnari
Published October 13, 2025
Lights Out Cleveland and it’s band of citizen science volunteers tackle collecting, rehabilitating, and cataloging migratory birds that have collided with Cleveland’s buildings
“Still warm,” Andrea Howell says as she picks a dead Lincoln sparrow off the sidewalk at the base of Key Bank tower in Cleveland. Howell, a volunteer for Lights Out Cleveland, spends the pre-dawn hours of her day walking and re-walking a set path looking for birds that have collided with the city’s buildings.
Howell places the bird in a bag, noting down the species, location of collision, date, and other important data points that can help conservationists better understand how urban areas and light pollution are impacting migratory birds.
From the middle of March to late May, and then again from mid-August to November, hundreds of species of birds are navigating the night skies above Cleveland, traveling between their breeding grounds in Canada then back down south for the winter.
Explore how urban areas, light pollution, and other conservation challenges are impacting the Lincoln sparrow and other migratory birds on the Audubon Migration Explorer
“Birds use the moon and the stars as navigation,” says Devin Mingesbruney, the program coordinator for Ohio Lights Out . “They are using these natural cues to navigate to and from their breeding grounds, and when they reach these really densely lit urban areas it draws them off their path.”
Once the birds are drawn into the city, they are surrounded by highly reflective glass that they struggle to differentiate from the sky, which leads to collisions. As sleek glass buildings are replacing the stone edifices of the past, the impact of city lights on migratory bird mortality is only increasing.
Lights Out Cleveland and their squad of collision volunteers have been working to capture injured birds for rehabilitation, collect birds that have died from collision for data, and spread awareness about the impacts of city lights on bird mortality since 2017.
This data is essential for providing companies with the information needed to invest in bird safe features. While construction trends are continuing in the direction of sleek glass buildings, Lights Out Cleveland advocates for treating windows with dotted film that helps make them more visible for birds.
“It is important that we are collecting information to inform current and future building projects. The goal is to reduce the amount of birds that are hitting windows, so we are collecting the ones that are hitting now to reduce the amount that will die in the future,” says Jake Kudrna, the manager of Cleveland Metroparks Watershed Stewardship Center and volunteer coordinator for Light Out Cleveland. Many buildings downtown have opted to treat their windows, but it isn’t a perfect solution.
One morning in late September, Howell and the other volunteers collected 77 birds that had collided with the buildings in downtown Cleveland. Many of these birds were still alive and were taken to the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center for rehabilitation. Between 2017 and 2023 the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center successfully rehabilitated 5,700 birds that were rescued during the Lights Out surveys.
A 2019 study found that North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970, and collision with glass is one of the leading causes of mortality for birds in the U.S. It is estimated that 100 million to 1 billion birds are killed annually in the United States from collisions with windows.
While most of the data on collisions is collected in brightly lit urban areas, suburban and rural communities also have a large impact on migratory bird species. “We are doing this on a large scale downtown,” Howell says. “But anybody could scale this down to their own micro habitat in their back yard. Everybody can treat their windows, reduce their light pollution, keep their cat indoors, and that would have an incredible impact.”
Visit Ohio Lights Out to become a volunteer in a collision monitoring program in Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, or Columbus for the spring or fall monitoring season.
This article was originally published on Burning River News: Bird by Bird— How Lights Out Cleveland is Tackling The Second Largest Threat To Migratory Birds