Project Safe Flight Update: October 19^th, 2005

by Nicole Delacretaz

Hello Everyone,

Before I reveal the numbers from this week, I would like to ask your help in finding a location to host our annual PSF holiday season party, scheduled for Sunday, Dec. 11. We were hoping one of you might be able to offer their home or know of a charming and welcoming place where we could hold this party. The location would have to accommodate 50 people and should be located in Manhattan. Please contact the office 212-691-7483 if you have any ideas. If we don’t find a place, the party will be hosted at the NYC Audubon offices

We received all the data from our volunteers for the first science project which was conducted from Oct. 6-9 (during the very rainy period two weeks ago). From the three bird kill zones which the project monitored, only three birds were found. All these birds were found at one bird-kill zone – the Metropolitan Museum of art.

Here is the data:

Morgan Mail’s reflective windows, October 19th 2005 © by Yigal Gelb

It is very likely that the bad weather conditions during the science project caused migration to be delayed. Furthermore, such long periods of rain during this season are fairly uncommon and this created a bird-clog stretching even further north. The clear skies and northerly winds we are having this week are bringing in massive amounts of birds to NYC; not surprisingly, we have been witnessing many collisions.

In a last effort to collect more data for our science project we decided to create a lastminute mini-science project. This project focused only on Morgan Mail, monitoring this site during three days (Tuesday-Thursday of this week). The data already collected suggests that many birds have been found, something that will help us know more about bird-collisions at Morgan Mail. I would like to thank all the volunteers who participate in this last-minute project. It’s really amazing how this project was put together in such a short time. Thank you Sam.

This week’s numbers:

So far this week, we have recorded 39 collisions (34 deaths and 5 injuries) spanning over 20 different species. These numbers are probably higher since not all collisions have been entered into the database.

We are still finding a considerable amount of warblers (15), which suggests that migration is slightly delayed. Below are the species found this week:

Black-throated Green Warbler by ©Cal Vornberger.

Golden-crowned Kinglet found by Nicole Delacretaz at Morgan Mail, October 19th. Picture ©Yigal Gelb

Preliminary Ranking of Bird-Kill Zones in Manhattan

Here is an update on the likely bird-kill zones we decided to monitor at the beginning of the season. We went ahead and ranked them based on the number of collisions.

Sites that were monitored and found not to be bird kill zones:

Possible new bird kill zones:

That’s all for this week.

Take care,

Nicole