Back in 2019, a research study from the Cornell Bird Lab of Ornithology famously, or infamously, ranked Chicago as the “most dangerous city for migrating birds.” Benjamin Van Doren contributed to that scientific paper and, in a full-circle moment, is now collaborating on a project to make the Windy City safer for the estimated 150 million to 200 million birds that wing their way over the city on their journeys north and south in the spring and fall. The first step in protecting migrating birds, Van Doren said, is understanding how they use Chicago's airspace. And that's what brought him to the rooftop of Illinois Center on a blustery day in late April. Now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Van Doren was joined by his grad assistant Shu-Yueh “Winnie” Liao and J'orge Garcia, executive director of Windy City Bird Lab, as the three installed an acoustic monitor more than 350 feet above street level. The device is the latest in a network that's grown to 45 or 50 such monitors spread across the city (and a few suburbs). The setups consist of a microphone, amplifier and credit-card-sized computer designed to record the calls of birds passing overhead at night, when most of North America's migratory birds are on the move. Because this nocturnal activity is nearly impossible to witness directly, “there's a lot we don't know about how migratory birds are navigating through a city like Chicago,” Van Doren said. “How do they contend with this urban jungle that we've created — from lights, to concrete to glass?”
“This is an opportunity to see how they engage with our sky in a way that we haven’t been able to see before,” Garcia said. More bird news:
The wait is over for Chicago’s female piping plovers. Three weeks after the fellas arrived at Montrose and Waukegan beaches, the ladies have landed. Monitors from Chicago Piping Plovers and Lake County Audubon have confirmed that for the third year running Sea Rocket has returned to Montrose and Blaze is back at Waukegan. “After a long journey from their wintering grounds, seeing these birds come back to the same stretch of shoreline is a thrill,” Lake County Audubon shared on social media.
Now the question is will the gals pair up with previous mates, Imani and Pepper, respectively, or will bachelor plover Pippin — who roves between the two beaches — finally make a love connection?
