We Are Nature

Dirty Birds

• Carnegie Museum of Natural History • Season 2 • Episode 8

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How does urbanization impact nonhumans? What can we learn from Pittsburgh’s past and present air quality challenges? How do we make space for biodiversity in cities? Featuring Serina Brady, Collection Manager of Birds at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Jon Rice, Urban Bird Conservation Coordinator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

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Michael Pisano:

You'reOn listening to the Anthropocene Archives, a presentation of We Are Nature. In this special series of stories, we're delving deep into Carnegie Museum of Natural History's 22 million collection items, raiding cabinets and cases, sifting through objects and organisms in search of stories of stewardship, solutions, and scientific wonder. On today's episode, a window into the lives of birds, saving bird lives from windows, and a pollution story told in plumage. So preen those feathers and stretch your wings. Time to take off.

Serina Brady:

Yeah, my name is Serina Brady. I am the Collection Manager for Carnegie Museum of Natural History Section of Birds.

Michael Pisano:

Excellent.

Jonathan Rice:

And I'm Jonathan Rice, the Urban Bird Conservation Coordinator for Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Michael Pisano:

Awesome. Thank you both so much for joining me today and taking us behind the scenes of the ornithology collection here at the museum. Could you just start us off by telling us a little bit about the bird collection?

Serina Brady:

Yeah, so the bird collection is the ninth largest in the United States, and we have representatives from we have species from all seven continents, and we span over 120 years of history. And most of our preps are the round study skins, but we also have taxidermy and skeletons and a variety of different preparation types.

Michael Pisano:

Excellent. I think we should get right into it. I'm excited to talk about the collection items you've brought with you.

MacKenzie Kimmel:

Collection item one is comprised of two specimens inside a 6-inch by 10-inch box. Despite being born a century apart, both these 90s kids share the same stylish look, striking red eyes, and lustrous black heads, rufous, meaning rust colored, patches down their sides, and light feathered breasts. One specimen's breast is bright white. The other's is curiously dull gray. Some listeners may have received a reminder to drink their tea from these specimens. Can you identify collection item one?

Michael Pisano:

Serina, would you mind describing what we uh are looking at here today?

Serina Brady:

Sure. So I brought uh three specimens from the bird collection. Um, two are eastern towhees, and the eastern towhees are medium-sized birds with a really nice like black hood and cape and black back and normally a very white belly. The two eastern towhees are both male. One was collected in 1895 and the other one was collected in 1993. The individual from 1895 is clearly more gray than white.

Michael Pisano:

Can you say the name of it again for me?

Serina Brady:

Eastern towhee.

Michael Pisano:

Towhee, and it's T-O-W-H-E-E.

Serina Brady:

Yes. \

Michael Pisano:

Towhee. Towhee. Excellent. And so before, you know, you you teased that one of these birds is very different in its plumage from the other, um, before we get into why that is, will you just tell me a little bit about the species? What do we know about this bird?

Serina Brady:

Yeah, so Eastern Towhee are actually the largest New World sparrow species in North America. They inhabit like dense, scrubby woodland areas, and they have this very distinctive um two-foot foraging behavior. You'll generally hear the leaf litter rustling before you actually see the towhee, and you'll see like the leaf litter like popcorn up.

Michael Pisano:

Kind of a loud eater.

Serina Brady:

Yeah, so it's um so they essentially do this two-footed like hop backwards, and that's how they uncover the leaf litter and get the arthropods and uh seeds and berries.

Michael Pisano:

So they're omnivorous, though. Yeah. Are they opportunistic? I mean, is that I guess I'm kind of curious, is that part of what makes them a sight here in cities or are they common in cities? Can you talk about their their range a little?

Serina Brady:

They kind of like somewhat dense understory. You can see them in the parks around Pittsburgh. So their night iNaturalst has some records and also like Squirrel Hill, but you generally won't see them walking in between the downtown buildings because there's not a lot of leaf litter to be scratching up in.

Michael Pisano:

That makes sense. I wish there were more.

Jonathan Rice:

Yeah.

Michael Pisano:

Uh is there anything what do you wish people knew about towhees?

Jonathan Rice:

They have one of the most delightful songs. I was hoping this would come up. Uh I wonder what it sounds like. And it's there's a really great mnemonic for it, uh, which just means that there's there's a way to sort of phrase the what the song sounds like as a way to remember it. And um, because of where they normally inhabit, these sort of dense scrubby areas and they're down on the ground. Um, unlike a lot of other birds, that you hear them singing and they're maybe at eye level or a little higher, these birds you don't normally see them, and all of a sudden you'll just hear them say, drink your tea. And it's catches you off guard because you don't see them and they're delightful and wonderful. And uh like a lot of birds, sometimes they

Michael Pisano:

One more, one more, sorry, sorry, before you go on, please, one more.

Jonathan Rice:

They go, drink your tea.

Michael Pisano:

Beautiful. Thank you so much.

Jonathan Rice:

Uh and and sometimes, like a lot of other birds, they will have partial variations of their song. So instead of hearing the whole thing, you might just hear drink, drink, uh, or any sort of variation of a combination of them. So you might stand in the woods going, what the heck was that? What who is that? Not realizing that it's a partial song of a towhee. But uh they're just, yeah, they're a very fun bird that you often hear, like Sirena said, before you see them. Yeah. It's kind of a fun way to come across them in the wild.

Michael Pisano:

Oh my gosh, sure. That's like building yourself a little mystery of like uh uh there's like a what you call like a serotonin loop in there, right? You're like, I hear it and then I have to go find it. You know, there's a quest afoot. Right. Um that's awesome. So I think I am curious because these samples I know are related to Pittsburgh, related to urbanization. Um, I want to talk a little bit just about birds in cities, right? Like small songbirds and a bunch of species that are a pretty common sight in cities if you are looking out for birds. Um, can you talk about the diversity of birds in urban areas? Maybe this is once for you. Sure. Uh, what attracts them and other birds to kind of like densely populated, very human-centered areas?

Jonathan Rice:

I think it depends on the birds because some birds have sort of co-evolved alongside the urbanization of humans. So birds like rock pigeons, house sparrows, European starlings, um, even larger raptors like peregrine falcons that historically live on large rocky outcroppings. That's what the Cathedral of Learning is. Um, and so these birds have adapted to live alongside humans in a way that benefits them and allows them to succeed and and thrive, you know, in a survival setting. And other birds, I don't know if I would say are attracted to cities, but there are indirect aspects of cities that other types of birds will take advantage of during different times of the year. So urban spaces tend to be heat sinks, and so in the spring they tend to be warmer, and so leaves butt out, insects hatch out sooner than surrounding the dens or forests. So as birds are maybe migrating, or even local residents that don't migrate will come into city areas where there are greener spaces because the leaves are coming out sooner. There's more food availability, and that has less to do with the people and more to do with the fact that urban spaces are heat sinks. And then there's the the aspect of artificial light, so light at night, light pollution disorients migrating birds, and in that case, can again, I don't know how to use the word attract, but it disorients them because they use the stars to navigate and specifically nocturnal migrants, and so when the surface of the earth is lit up so brightly, it confuses them and they're they're sort of drawn, similarly, like like moths and other insects are drawn to lights at night, and those can draw birds into urban spaces, pulling them out of migration prematurely, and so in that case it's it can be very harmful to them.

Michael Pisano:

Absolutely, and I know that's a big part of your work, and we're gonna get into some thankfully solutions that people can kind of participate in about that in a little, but let's start, I think, getting back to these toies. I want to talk about these particular specimens. So, why did you bring these?

Serina Brady:

These two specimens were used in a study by Dubai and Foldner that looked at the impacts of environmental or atmospheric soot and environmental legislation. And so the individual from 1895 is covered in soot versus the individual from 1993. These were two of, I think, over a thousand birds that they used in the study, and they focus primarily on the rust belt, cities in the rust belt, like Pittsburgh, where we had this anecdotal evidence of the atmosphere back then and how dirty it was. The soot was actually deposited on the feathers, and so they were able to go through and and track the change over time and see, okay, the birds got cleaner when we started to actually like implement the Clean Air Act and um and all the other laws.

Michael Pisano:

Yes, there's policy. I think there's also a transition technologically to people using natural gas that was part of it, right? It's really interesting. I read a little bit of the studies abstract, but um, the amount of kind of historical events that you can track from the fluctuations. And so birds get new feathers every year, is that right? And so it's part of this. Talking about that.

Serina Brady:

Part of the question always kind of was, I believe, was are the feathers actually changing their pigments in response to the environment, or is it a byproduct, kind of like industrial melanization?

Michael Pisano:

Just a quick definition of industrial melanization, which we happened to talk about earlier this season with invertebrate zoology collection manager Dr. Kevin Keegan. One of the biggest or most famous examples is the pepper moth from England. So this is an example of what was called industrial melanism. So in England, as they're going through the Industrial Revolution, these trees in the forest were originally kind of light-colored with a light gray bark, but then you know, coal started to be burned and coal soot was pumped into the air and it started to settle on these tree trunks, turning them black. And there's this moth, the pepper moth out there that naturally has two different forms. There's a gray form and a black form, and they naturally coexist, and they tend to rest on tree bark when they're just hanging out. And birds are always flying around, you know, looking for insect and right. And so, you know, before this coal was pumped into the air, the gray form would be totally camouflaged on a gray tree trunk. But then the gray form started to stick out like a sore thumb because these trees were now black, and the black form was then camouflaged. So in collections around the world, in natural history collections with peppermoth specimens, you can see this slow transition from gray to black specimens over time.

Serina Brady:

They noticed that the birds that had molted their feathers in the fall, of course, they were done clean, and it's not a change in pigment. And so then they were able to go through and actually quantify the amount of soot deposited on the feathers. They used, I think, relatively new technology as well. So that was kind of. Yeah. And yeah, to see that the birds were definitely dirtier at different times.

Michael Pisano:

And so we were using the word soot. I want to be clear about what that is. What's soot?

Serina Brady:

Atmospheric black carbon, essentially like a byproduct of the incomplete combustion of coal.

Michael Pisano:

Right.

Serina Brady:

I think that's the technical term.

Michael Pisano:

Uh and so it came from, as you said, this this study is in the like manufacturing belt, the rust belt now, the kind of post-industrial American cities. Um I actually have a quote that I would like to share. Um, it's a, I think, a famous quote if you're a Pittsburger. It's from 1868. Um, there was an author, James Parton, who came and visited Pittsburgh for the Atlantic, which I didn't know was around in 1868, but good for them. Sustaining power. Uh quote: The entire space lying between the hills was filled with blackest smoke, from out of which the hidden chimneys sent forth tongues of flame. While from the depths of the abyss came up the noise of hundreds of steam hammers, there would be moments when no flames were visible, but soon the wind would force the smoky curtains aside, and the whole black expanse would be dimly lighted with dull wreaths of fire. It is an unprofitable business, view hunting. But if anyone would enjoy a spectacle as striking as Niagara, he may do so by simply walking up a long hill to Cliff Street in Pittsburgh and looking over into hell with the lid taken off. Dramatic look. Uh yeah, so hell with the lid off, hell with the lid taken off is something I've heard as someone living in Pittsburgh. This is obviously like a public health nightmare for the people who lived here. Um I'd also love to hear kind of, maybe it's an obvious connection, but if one of you could help us draw the connection to climate, like why do we care about soot and how is that connected to climate and maybe questions of climate today?

Jonathan Rice:

Yeah, uh, I think so often conversations around urbanization and the impacts of specifically in this case fossil fuel burning, but but really any byproduct of urbanization and its relationship to green spaces, as if the two are discrete and are not all connected. The fact that what we do in urban spaces impacts green spaces and what happens in green spaces also impacts urban spaces is a larger part of that discussion that these public health issues for the people who live in this direct city, well, there's also bioaccumulation of those of those particulates in the environment. There's also things like acid rain that will not fall here in Pittsburgh, but will fall in other places like upstate New York that is caused by our pollution here. And so uh you have a very large tract of forest called the Adirondacks in upstate New York that has some of the the highest volume of acid rain still in the northeast today because of all of the pollution sort of to the southwest of it that is built up in the atmosphere. There is a public health issue for humans, but then for every other part of nature that interacts with humans across the gradient of urban to suburban to rural to natural, pristine green spaces. Wildlife does not perceive our borders. Uh and while we put imaginary lines on a map, we do, they don't see that. And they cross all of those borders using a more complex system than we still really understand.

Michael Pisano:

So you started talking about it a little bit before. Um, what accounts for there being less soot over time in these birds?

Serina Brady:

Yeah, so there was the, I believe it was the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 that was instituted that didn't necessarily look at how to control air pollution, but it funded research about air pollution. And then there was a Clean Air Act of, I think it was 1963, trying to increase or improve the air quality. And then it was renewed again in 1970. So with some legislation and I think general overall public outcry, change, change happened. Change.

Michael Pisano:

That's that's uh an interesting thing to bring up. I think we should maybe talk about it, right? Changes we've seen in our lifetimes, as we see from this history, is hard. It's hard to do on these big systemic levels and to you know think about the way that coal was integrated into culture and into city life here, the rest of the Rust Belt, across the country, across the world. It's very entrenched. It's still a little entrenched, but obviously, you know, we're moving away from coal, taking our time, maybe a little bit about it. Um, but there are now other fossil fuels to be concerned about, even though the air here in Pittsburgh isn't uh a black, you know, miasma, a terrible cloud of soot. Uh, it is still pretty bad to breathe on many days, especially if you live by the remaining industry that's here. There's still steelmaking, there's still coal. So, yeah, I mean, it's wonderful to see that picture in this study of uh, you know, divestment from coal, of coal losing prevalence in the country. Obviously, not the only concern we have now in terms of fossil fuel use. I guess I wonder what you would hope to see moving forward, you know, as kind of an extension of that history we see in this study, you know, to what's next. What do you hope to see?

Jonathan Rice:

Sure. The issue of air pollution is much less the issue anymore. Um, there's there's other forms of pollution. Uh, obviously, my I focus a lot on light pollution, but also just the general release of greenhouse gases and the mass amount that we that we still do that are causing other indirect impacts towards these birds, whether they're resident or migrants, they encounter so many hurdles through their life, whether it's the the increase uh of the global temperature, altering different parts of the climate where migrants need to be timing where they are spatially with the budding out of flowers or the hatching out of insects. And as global temperatures change, the timing of some of those things will alter, but the migration timing of the birds is focused more on day length and the sun and the stars, and so their timing doesn't change with the temperature like other more natural systems do. And so we're seeing insects hatching out earlier while birds are arriving later, and they need those sort of swells and swarms of insects to help refuel for migration or uh to start um feeding for energy consumption, for uh laying eggs, for brooding, for providing food for their chicks.

Michael Pisano:

Um These are relationships that have developed over millions of years of the insects, the birds, the plants, everything working together, and now it's changing too fast for the rate of climate change because of all of these issues is accelerating at a rate that the birds can't keep up with. I guess just to kind of wrap up on the toies, you know, I think they're a really good example of why collections are important, right? I don't think the people who collected the birds were expecting a study that's you know span that amount of time. Um just as collections manager, I wonder if you would speak to kind of the importance of collecting in this way.

Serina Brady:

Museum collections are our longest-running data set for biodiversity on the planet. And it's the only way that we can kind of reach back in time and see what that time was at that particular place. These are incidental indicators of air pollution versus the classic study of DDT and eggshell thinning. That was explicitly like museum collections were used, you saw that the populations were decreasing, they measured egg collections that were collected throughout time, saw the thinning, and then environmental policy and change occurred as a result of that. Part of my job is to be documenting the biodiversity of today and adding to the collection because I'm always trying to think about the future and the questions that aren't, we don't know what the questions are going to be, but it's my job to be able to provide that data for for the future. So yeah, museum collections are integral to understand the past but also the present and the future.

Michael Pisano:

Yeah, and to making changes like those policy changes in the DDT case and the coal case and the air pollution. Excellent. Thank you so much. Okay, so thank you, Toies. I'd love to move on to the next collection item you've brought with us here.

MacKenzie Kimmel:

Collection item two lays alongside the Toies within the same 6x10 inch box. While its name may evoke a Victorian-era insult, it is purely descriptive of this specimen's signature fashion piece and favorite meal. The pointy business end of this specimen serves double duty for excavation and communication, and it's in business across almost all of North America. Often confused for its hairy or downy cousins, a distinctive white patch and bold red streak help this specimen stand out in the crowd. What is collection item two?

Michael Pisano:

Could you speak to us about the other collection item we have?

Jonathan Rice:

Yeah, so this is a male yellow-bellied sapsucker, that is its real name. This is a bird that was collected on October 5th of 2019 in downtown Pittsburgh as a result of a window collision. A volunteer as part of the museum's BirdSafe Pittsburgh program, which researches birds colliding with windows, found this bird while walking around in downtown Pittsburgh, and it made its way here to the collection as a form of salvage, a way that we can salvage birds that have passed through indirect means and give them sort of another life here to help aid our research and understanding. Some fun facts about sapsuckers. They are named thusly because they drill small holes, horizontal holes called sap wells, in over a thousand different species of trees, but they prefer maples and birches, which so do humans. So makes sense, checks out. The cool part is not only do they drill these small sap wells and then drink the sap as it's coming out, but other birds like nuthatches and even ruby-throated hummingbirds in the Northeast also will nest near sapsucker well trees. Even some ruby-throated hummingbirds in Canada time their migration alongside sapsuckers to feed off of their sap wells. But not only birds benefit from it, other mammals like bats and porcupines will also drink from the sap wells, which is just really cool that this bird is has this passive benefit to the ecosystem, sort of in its in its own right. And it does so without killing the tree, which is pretty cool too. How they actually drink the sap, they don't suck it. Uh they drill this this small hole into the cambium of the tree, and then they they stick their tongue into the hole, and their tongue has all these little bristles, kind of like a bottle cleaner, and it just increases the surface area, which is allows more of the sap to be.

Michael Pisano:

It's incredible, but that image is actually kind of troubling for me.

Jonathan Rice:

Yeah, it's it's don't think about it too long. You have the information. There it is. Uh we'll move on. Um and uh they're the only fully migrating woodpecker species and uh in eastern North America. So we have several other species of woodpecker, like uh red-bellied, northern flicker, piliated, hairy, woody, uh uh downy. Not woody, uh I would have believed. And they're all resident or partial migrants, uh, but yellow-bellied sapsucker are the only fully migrating species, which is pretty cool. Some of them are short distant migrants, but even the ones that breed in our area, which is sort of the southernmost breeding region or portion of their breeding range, will still migrate even a short distance.

Michael Pisano:

Uh and does their migration pattern account for them being in a city? I mean, I think some people might be surprised to hear about a bird with like this very, I for lack of a better way of putting it, like a very Attenborough, like planet Earthy kind of story, right? It's bringing all these other organisms to the table. Um, it's right here in Pittsburgh. So is that on its path or what what kind of accounts for its presence here?

Jonathan Rice:

Pittsburgh is a very green city. Given our history, we have a very lush green city. We have a lot of older growth trees. We taught we talked earlier about the lack of understory, the lack of leaf litter, which is disappointing. But we have a lot of older growth trees, a lot of oak trees, which are great host plants for hundreds of different species of caterpillars that lots of birds feed off of. And so it's very green, which is beneficial. We're the city of three rivers. So rivers and waterways are used as migratory pathways for diurnal or daytime migrants, whereas um nocturnal migrants are using the stars. And so being on a waterway, we're right in the pathway of a lot of diurnal migrants. We also have a lot of uh sort of large patches of contiguous forest in and around the city, like Hayeswoods, Frick Park, Shenley Park. There's a lot of them that make Pittsburgh a viable place to stop over during migration, as well as to be a year-round resident. Yeah.

Michael Pisano:

Can you speak a little bit to the diversity of birds that live here and that migrate through this region regularly?

Jonathan Rice:

I mean, we have hundreds of species. A more morbid way to discuss it is the biodiversity of birds that we find colliding with windows just in downtown Pittsburgh. So these would most likely be nocturnal migrants, and we're only sampling during spring and fall migration, and we have just shy of a hundred species that we've collected. Um, some of these species I've never seen alive in the city. Like Kentucky Warbler, I've never seen alive in the city of Pittsburgh, but I found too many of them not alive. Um and really spectacular species that you would never expect to find in the urban setting, like Swainson thrushes, wood thrushes, American woodcock, which kind of looks like a football with a long beak. Um and you know, for the size of this bird, they're very wacky and don't they don't fit in on the sidewalks, but they they these are all birds that get trapped by either the light pollution that draws them out of migration or the the unfortunate birds that as the sun is rising, they naturally come down to land and they end up in the city and they're foraging around using our very green space, which is very attractive. Unfortunately, though, we have a lot of glass directly adjacent to that vegetation. And so while the birds are moving from sort of one bush or one tree to another, they mistake other reflection in glass for more vegetation and collide with the glass while trying to forage first thing in the morning. And so, because of that, most of these collisions are happening between the first and third story. Most collisions don't happen high up on skyscrapers. So this is mostly residential buildings or um, I mean, you can find them in downtown. Uh there was a study in 2014 done that estimated the percentage of birds that that die from collisions in in downtown cities, and it's one to two percent. The majority happen at residential homes and low-rise buildings that just completely smatter our our you know, the whole countryside. And that's just the United States. Um, this is urbanization is contiguous across the whole world, so it's an issue that anywhere there's glass, there will be collisions.

Michael Pisano:

And can you talk a little bit about the scale of how many birds that we're talking about?

Jonathan Rice:

Yeah, so it is the second leading indirect cause of mortality for birds directly after cats. Yeah. Um, so an estimated 366 to 900 and some odd million birds. So the average is about 600 million birds die a year in the US alone from window collisions. Um, a lot of people usually just say about a billion because that study uh removed birds that collide with the window and fly away. We have learned since in the following years that like humans deal with concussions, birds also have usually brain swelling, hemorrhages, subdermal hematomas, things of that nature, that if they don't perish after the initial collision, they succumb to their injuries later after. So those estimates might even be too low. And that's just the United States.

Michael Pisano:

Wow. Well, thankfully, this is not an impossible problem to solve. Correct. I wonder if you would talk to us a little bit about your role as urban bird conservation coordinator and running BirdSafe Pittsburgh. What's that?

Jonathan Rice:

So BirdSafe Pittsburgh is a community science program that was started here in 2014 by my predecessor. And it was it was begun as a research program to understand where and when birds were colliding with buildings, in downtown Pittsburgh specifically. Over the last decade, we have collected all of that information and begun to analyze what about a building makes it problematic. So why certain buildings get more collisions when the one down the street doesn't. And we've learned whether it's the amount of glass on the building, how reflective the glass is, what the local vegetation is like, so what the landscaping is like, and how all of that factors into what makes a building most problematic. And so we've been able to move on from the research into sort of an action stage where we're we're trying to change our urban landscape to educate these building owners and managers who most of the time aren't unaware and once they learn about this issue, they don't like that their building is causing these kinds of problems. And that's good. And and they want to see it fixed.

Michael Pisano:

And so they're and be eager, I'm sure. Yeah.

Jonathan Rice:

Whether that's changing landscaping to have native plants like white oaks or service berries instead of ornamentals that are that are not from uh the eastern United States, things that benefit the birds that move through here, as well as retrofitting or updating their glass that is adjacent to that landscaping to protect the birds, because what we have is sort of an ecological trap in some ways where we have this green space that's very inviting, but then the birds don't always make it out. Right.

Michael Pisano:

Which is which is not how we like our green space. We can do better.

Jonathan Rice:

No, we can, and there's hope because there's there's a handful of simple things that that people can do. There's something called the two by four rule. So two inches by four inches is is roughly the spacing of any element that is placed on the external side of a window. And all that does is it breaks up the reflection. We don't think it lets the birds know that there's a window there, it more so de-incentifies the bird from trying to fly through the structure.

Michael Pisano:

Too much of a trick shot.

Jonathan Rice:

Yeah, and a lot of places are adopting two by two, but you can have just a matrix of dots, which is something that we have here on the museum, and it's two inches by two inches or two inches spaced vertically and four inches spaced horizontally, and that sort of accounts for as a bird is in flight with their wings out, that's roughly the rectangular shape that they make. And so just applying anything in that pattern on the outside of a window makes it bird safe.

Michael Pisano:

That's awesome, and it seems extremely accessible, right? This isn't a high-tech solution. This is stickers, this is dangling structures, paracord.

Jonathan Rice:

You can you can go to um a Wild Birds Unlimited or an Audubon Center and they sell tapes that are readily made for this. They're already spaced out that you just apply to your window. The other thing is, especially for a homeowner, you don't have to do this to every window. If you if you take some time and listen, you might find that there's one or two windows that are problematic. Everybody kind of has the same story about their sliding glass door or their kitchen window. That's the only window you have to retrofit.

Michael Pisano:

Yeah.

Jonathan Rice:

And that might solve the issue. And that may only be one to ten birds across a whole year, but if you multiply that across every home or structure across the contiguous United States, that's a lot of birds. Yeah.

Michael Pisano:

I think it's it's really significant. I think it's really rare to have a feeling that like an individual or personal scale or like your home scale action that actually is relevant that feels like it can make a difference. And so when you add up, you know, the impact, like you're saying, I think that's really incredible. Um I want to make sure there's nothing that you want to add about the collection of birds that have come in from Bird Safe or any other observations about this problem.

Serina Brady:

Just a tidbit. I was walking to Bakery Square this weekend and found a female American red start that I had hit and collided. So I picked it up and you did not hit it.

Jonathan Rice:

No, no, no. It hit a window.

Serina Brady:

It hit a window, yes. And so I picked it up. And it's really important if you are gonna kind of salvage a bird to record the location and the date.

Jonathan Rice:

BirdSafe has a website, birdsafe pgh.org, and there's a way to, if you find a bird, to go to that website and report it. There's a way for us to gather that that incidental data that can be utilized when discussing a building owner, all of the birds that have collided. We might not have all those study skins, but if we have all the points of data, that that helps us to uh enact change in in policy and and to just convince people to participate. Participate, yeah, and to to care.

Michael Pisano:

Like they shouldn't need that level of data to care, but you know, life is busy and there's a lot of things to worry about, care about.

Jonathan Rice:

And I think a lot of other people, uh I think most people think of inner city birds and they think of rock doves. They think of house sparrows, you know. Here in Pittsburgh, we we get a surprising amount of gulls in the winter, uh, which you would not expect for a landlocked. So inland. Um but those birds we do not find colliding with windows. Something about their ability to survive alongside people is coincided with their ability to recognize a window right before they hit it.

Michael Pisano:

Wow.

Jonathan Rice:

Whereas these migrants that live in deeper forests that don't interact with humans on a regular basis seem to be what we call super colliders. Whatever it is, you know, we don't fully understand how they perceive glass, but that's the other thing is helping helping people to understand that there's a wide variety of really wonderful species of greatest conservation need is what a lot of them are referred to as, such as that Kentucky warbler, or like golden wing warblers, really a lot of the warblers. Yeah. Or the thrushes or sparrows, I mean, all of them really. Those are what are what are colliding in these city spaces and not the the average everyday sparrow or pigeon.

Michael Pisano:

Right. Which we should still care about. Which is still very cool. But I I am curious, I guess, like it kind of makes me think about points of entry into conservation and into caring, like you were talking about, right? Like I think birds are a great kind of um emissary for for non-human life in a way where there's charismatic. I think there's a big established community of people who look for them, are thrilled to see them, go out of their way to you know collect the sightings kind of mimic their songs. Mimic their songs beautifully in company, publicly. Um and I guess I'm just curious about other things you've seen as I guess ways that you've seen birds as like an effective way to bring people into caring more broadly, right? Because I think you don't just care about birds being okay, you care also about the climate and about you know the whole system and uh of which we are a part, obviously. Um what do you think it is about birds uh that's exciting to people and you know any kind of lessons we can take in conservation as a whole from getting people engaged and excited?

Serina Brady:

Like as you said, they're very charismatic and often like sometimes really brightly colorful. I know that I just watch birds and they make me smile, they bring me joy. And I think a study recently showed people that interact with birds are actually somewhat happier.

Jonathan Rice:

Oh, there are mental health benefits to bird watching. Yeah.

Michael Pisano:

Of course there are, but that's so cool to have it formalized. Okay.

Serina Brady:

They are kind of like an entryway, and if you do care a lot about the bird, then also caring about the environment, it kind of goes hand in hand.

Jonathan Rice:

Birds are a great umbrella species because people care. People care about a shorebird called a red knot. Okay, people tend not to care about horseshoe crabs.

Michael Pisano:

That's fair.

Jonathan Rice:

The reason that these two things are linked is because red knots primarily eat the eggs of horseshoe crabs during migration. Gotcha. So to protect the red knots, you have to protect the horseshoe crabs. And so the people who love the horseshoe crabs and want to protect them, the marketing campaign was do you love red knots? This is how we save red knots, is by saving the horseshoe crabs. And there's so many management practices that use umbrella species more broadly, panda bears, sea turtles.

Michael Pisano:

It's not just in birds, but charismatic megafauna, the motivational, you know, the easy pitches. Yeah.

Jonathan Rice:

Right, because if you to protect one thing, you have to protect the whole system. And so to protect something like a wood thrush, you need deep, dense forest, thick, you know, tracts of forest to protect cerulean warblers and golden wing warblers, you know, you need specific kinds of habitat management that not only benefits that species, but everything else that comes along with that particular habitat type or that that particular situation. And so birds can be beneficial in that way because, yeah, people care and it's easy to kind of tag on the protection of other necessary and important species that don't get enough love and care from from the general public that we can get at through active conservation of birds. Excellent.

Michael Pisano:

Excellent, thank you. And so speaking of active conservation of birds, another thing people can do is participate in lights out campaigns. Can you just tell us what that is?

Jonathan Rice:

So Lights Out Pittsburgh is sort of a bird-safe Pittsburgh present. So it's it's within our Bird Safe Pittsburgh program. Similarly, it's it's to go alongside of window collisions because light pollution and window collisions all wrap up in one. And so the best thing and the easiest thing that we can do to help protect birds is to just flick a switch. Right. So every night before I go to bed, I walk around my house and I flick off all my outdoor lights, specifically during the migration season, September 1st to November 15th for the fall, and March 1st to June 1st for the spring. Um, and we've also contacted several large skyscrapers in downtown Pittsburgh who have decided to participate as well. Uh so these are buildings that overnight they might have several floors lit up for people who don't work standard nine to fives, right? Uh whether it's cleaning companies or security, discussing with them about turning off unnecessary lights. We're not saying that all lights have to be out overnight, but just asking people to the night crew has to work in the dark. Exactly. That's problematic. And not only for folks at work, but also for safety in a city, right? That lighting needs to be it has to exist in some of these places for public safety.

Michael Pisano:

But harm reduction is real, right? It's not all or nothing.

Jonathan Rice:

Exactly. And so asking people to look at their paradigm, do you have automatic switches? So no one has to turn on and off the switches. If there's people on the floor working, the lights are on, and after they leave, they go off after a certain amount of time. For street lights, how well are they shielded? Are they just open bulbs that allow light to escape to the sky? Because that's a waste of light, it's a waste of electricity, and it's harmful. Whereas if they're properly shielded to focus the light towards the ground, that's where we want the light. We're having good conversations, people are participating. This is one aspect of reducing window collisions. It does not replace active retrofits to existing problematic windows. Um, and window collisions happen day and night, all year round, not just during migration, but specifically a couple nights ago, we had over a million birds fly over western Pennsylvania because of just the push of migration. And so it's during this time of year when we have those kinds of massive pushes, huge swells and flocks of mixed species of birds, which is in and itself pretty spectacular. Yeah, and there's there's a whole nother aspect of light pollution as far as astronomy and public health goes. There's a lot of new connections to the amount of artificial light pollution and cancer. I don't know much about that. I'm not a physician, but there are those connections as well. So it's not just impacting birds, it's impacting lots of different wildlife. Because, like we talked about before, these systems have been developing for millions of years. And a little over a hundred years ago, one guy invented a light bulb, and the world has changed so rapidly. That these systems can't adapt and change with that so easily.

Michael Pisano:

So, I mean, these changes that uh human presence at the kind of Anthropocene era that we are talking about on this show have been so rapid. Uh uh, but you know, they're not going away quickly, right? There's been a great acceleration, great deceleration seems a little like a tougher putt, I'll put it that way. Um so how you know it does seem really key that we make space for biodiversity in human spaces, for you know, non-human biodiversity. But I would love, you know, kind of invite you to speak about what's important about that to you, and like what I really would love to hear from both of you, each of you, is like what that city looks like. Kind of take us on a little tour. Like, what is the a friendlier city to birds and maybe you know, other uh their habitat, other things that make up their habitat, other organisms. What's that look like?

Serina Brady:

There are a number of things, like you know, we're talking about bird safe glass. If you have a cat keeping it, keeping it indoors or planting, you know, native plants that I think maybe, you know, these small incremental changes can kind of help create. And also like noting what biodiversity is around and just taking a taking a moment of time to kind of document. I mean, there's an iNatural list where you can go around and take a photo and you know, the scientific community can ID it for you. And again, that's occurrence data.

Michael Pisano:

Yeah.

Serina Brady:

And that is that is important. Keeping in mind that it's all around us, and you might be like, you know, surrounded by city skyscrapers, but there's a lot more to it than than just the buildings. But thankfully, yeah, right. Yeah.

Michael Pisano:

Yeah, yeah. What do you think when you gaze out at the future?

Jonathan Rice:

Uh just to add to some of those things, you know, we've been describing very passive or retroactive forms of bird-friendly architecture, but there's a whole new school of environmental thought when it comes to design and environmental design, building buildings for the sake of their relationship to the environment, whether that's for energy use and sustainability to you know the mental health of people who work in that building and the comfort of working in that building, to how wildlife interacts with it. Uh, and that doesn't have to be all glass with stickers on it. It could be, you know, there's so many new, I feel like a lot of them are museums around the country that have implemented these new forms of architecture that the architects aren't going into it, I don't think, inherently bird-friendly, but the design ends up bird-friendly. And so th things like that were just more of a societal shift in thinking about our relationship with the environment. And I think this goes back again to there is no discrete barrier. I don't think we make space for biodiversity. Biodiversity exists, whether we acknowledge it or not, and whether we're willing to live alongside it and and sort of, I don't want to say commune with it, but be more willing to be part of the system, right? There's a great quote about time travel, and that everybody talks about if you go back in time and change something small, it has drastic impact on the future. But nobody in the present thinks that doing something small can drastically impact the future. But I like that. If you keep that same mentality, uh every small thing that you do today might have an incremental and large impact on the future. And that kind of sustains my hope in the small things, the small everyday things. You know, not everybody can can shut their lights off, not everybody can afford to live off of the most sustainably produced products or foods. You know, there's a lot of other factors that go into society besides just what's impacting the environment and wildlife. And so, yeah, our willingness and ability to learn and live alongside these systems and be a part of these systems, and that our society is structured legally, policy-wise, to not only protect money and power, but but also, you know, the everyday person and the everyday bird.

Michael Pisano:

Absolutely. And uh the many links between everyday person and everyday bird, I don't think we really can survive without one another. A million migrating birds worth of thanks to Serena and John for inviting us into the Carnegie's Ornithology collection. And all the wonderful birds they're in for teaching us to make space in our places for non-human neighbors and visitors alike. We Are Nature is produced by Nicole Heller and Sloan McCrae. It's recorded at Carnegie Museum of Natural History by Matt Unger and Garrick Schmidt. DJ Thermos makes the music. Mackenzie Kimmel describes the collection items, and Garrick Schmidt and Michael Pizzano, that's me, edits the podcast. Thanks for listening.