Blackbrook Audubon welcomes Dr. Andy Jones as he presents “Migration All Around Us: How Birds Navigate the Americas” 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, February 18 at Penitentiary Glen. For some five billion individual birds, a trip to Central or South America from North America is an essential and stunning annual accomplishment. Dr. Jones will explain why birds undertake this grueling trip and how they find their way to wintering grounds they have never seen before. He is the Curator of Ornithology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
Most species of songbirds migrate at night, and lights on tall buildings or aimed at the sky can disorient them and draw them into buildings. This causes many birds to strike windows or circle buildings until they fall from exhaustion. Lights Out Cleveland is the program in this region within the Ohio Lights Out network, which is coordinated by Ohio Bird Conservation Initiative. Ohio Lights Out staff and volunteers assist managers of buildings that are enrolled in the program to adapt their lighting schedules and modify their buildings’ glass to make urban landscapes safer for migratory wildlife, according to https://ohiolightsout.org.
Lights Out Cleveland monitors bird-building collisions during migration. Dr. Jones will present the results of that work, including insights from rehabilitating birds as well as a new discovery from the collision patterns across the city.
The program is open to all. Penitentiary Glen is at 8668 Kirtland-Chardon Road, Kirtland. For more information, visit blackbrookaudubon.org. Follow Blackbrook Audubon Society on Facebook. Blackbrook Audubon is the local chapter of National Audubon Society covering Ashtabula, Geauga and Lake counties.
Programs cancelled due to weather will be announced on the iAlert system on WKYC-TV 3, wkyc.com, Newsradio WTAM 1100 AM, wtam. com and WMJI 105.7 FM.
Photo: Blackpoll Warbler by Debbi Schuster.
