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.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology recently released some new tools to better track bird migration, which could be very useful for volunteers participating in Lights Out monitoring efforts. Visit birdcast.info to explore the tools.
They’ve boiled down decades of migration science, coupled it with real-time weather data, and created two simple tools: a 3-day migration forecast, and an up-to-the-moment replay of migration activity.
