Devin Mingesbruney, is a graduate student at Miami University studying conservation biology with a specific focus on birds. She is an avid birder and volunteer with Lights Out, Columbus. While walking or driving at night in downtown Columbus, it’s hard not to miss all the bright lights illuminating the streets, parking lots, and high-rise buildings.
A migrating Wood Thrush injured in a downtown window collision was rescued by Lights Out volunteers April 27 and later fitted with a nanotag to track its journey to summer habitats. The Wood Thrush was only the second bird rescued in several years of Lights Out monitoring to have a nanotag placed before being released back to its migration pathway.
On a warm May morning this spring, Kandace Glanville walked past Mirror Lake on The Ohio State University campus, gingerly holding a paper lunch bag in her right hand. She strode through dewy grass until she reached the edge of a small wooded area just west of Browning Amphitheatre. Glanville squatted, removed the paper clip securing the bag, and reached in. She pulled out a Bay-breasted Warbler, a tiny bird just 5.5 inches long, stunned from colliding with a window on campus earlier that morning.
While all of the windows and bright lights from buildings like these in Columbus might look nice to us, for birds, they can be deadly. A group called Lights Out Columbus came together to help make sure that birds can safely migrate through Ohio.
This past spring, students from the Ornithology Club at The Ohio State University developed a campus-wide monitoring program to check for bird-building collisions during spring and fall migration. Club co-presidents Kandace Glanville and Tyler Ficker collaborated with Chris Tonra (Assistant Professor in Avian Wildlife Ecology) and Matthew Shumar (Program Coordinator, Ohio Bird Conservation Initiative) to develop protocols for the monitoring effort. They were joined this fall by a team of dedicated undergraduate students.
