ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Drivers of fatal bird collisions in an urban center.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Artificial Light at Night Consistently Impacts Avian Physiology and Behaviour: A Meta-Analysis.Ecology letters · 2026Pooled it
- Limited capacity of habitat features to buffer grassland bird declines.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2026Article
- Mechanisms Driving Ground-Dwelling Animal Diversity Responses to Urbanization Gradients: A Case Study From the Chuhe River Riparian Zone in Nanjing, China.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- A model to quantify the probability of collision between birds and aircraft: Applications for onboard lighting.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2026Article
- Structuring the skies: Diel dynamics of migratory animal movement in the lower atmosphere.Ecology · 2025Article
- Bird mortality on high-speed railways: lessons from two large contrasting species.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Simple Bagged Movement Models for Telemetry Data.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Conservation-focused mapping of avian migratory routes using a pan-European automated telemetry network.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
- Human recreational activity does not influence open cup avian nest survival in urban green spaces.Urban ecosystems · 2025Article
- Eco-metropolis: Re-interpreting ecological conservation in the context of innovative agglomeration.Environmental science and ecotechnology · 2024Article
- To mitigate bird collisions, enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- The effects of cities on quail (Coturnix coturnix) migration: a disturbing story of population connectivity, health, and ecography.Environmental monitoring and assessment · 2024Article
- Rehabilitation outcomes of bird-building collision victims in the Northeastern United States.PloS one · 2024Article
- Artificial light at night is a top predictor of bird migration stopover density.Nature communications · 2023Article
- A vision for incorporating human mobility in the study of human-wildlife interactions.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Review
- What causes bird-building collision risk? Seasonal dynamics and weather drivers.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Quantifying long-term phenological patterns of aerial insectivores roosting in the Great Lakes region using weather surveillance radar.Global change biology · 2023Article
- Autumn stopover hotspots and multiscale habitat associations of migratory landbirds in the eastern United States.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Field-testing effectiveness of window markers in reducing bird-window collisions.Urban ecosystems · 2022Article
- Urbanization affects spatial variation and species similarity of bird diversity distribution.Science advances · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Millions of nocturnally migrating birds die each year from collisions with built structures, especially brightly illuminated buildings and communication towers. Reducing this source of mortality requires knowledge of important behavioral, meteorological, and anthropogenic factors, yet we lack an understanding of the interacting roles of migration, artificial lighting, and weather conditions in causing fatal bird collisions. Using two decades of collision surveys and concurrent weather and migration measures, we model numbers of collisions occurring at a large urban building in Chicago. We find that the magnitude of nocturnal bird migration, building light output, and wind conditions are the most important predictors of fatal collisions. The greatest mortality occurred when the building was brightly lit during large nocturnal migration events and when winds concentrated birds along the Chicago lakeshore. We estimate that halving lighted window area decreases collision counts by 11× in spring and 6× in fall. Bird mortality could be reduced by ∼60% at this site by decreasing lighted window area to minimum levels historically recorded. Our study provides strong support for a relationship between nocturnal migration magnitude and urban bird mortality, mediated by light pollution and local atmospheric conditions. Although our research focuses on a single site, our findings have global implications for reducing or eliminating a critically important cause of bird mortality.
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