Summary: Turn off all non-essential indoor and outdoor lights from 11 pm - 6 am every night from 05 September to 20 October 2023 to protect out Texas migrating birds. Willow Park may not have tall buildings but many Willow Park citizens have residential flood light. And those who work in the Metroplex should remind their high-rise offices to consider dimming or turning off lights during Fall Migration.
Latest Update: Monday, 18 September, 2023
Lights Out, Texas! from 05 Sept to 20 Oct 2023 for Fall bird migration.
Fall Peak Migration for birds occurs in Texas from early September to last October. Protect our migrating birds by turning off all non-essential indoor and outdoor lights from 11 pm - 6 am every night from 05 September to 20 October 2023.
Willow Park may not have tall buildings, but many Willow Park citizens have residential flood light. And those who work in the Metroplex should remind their high-rise offices to consider dimming or turning off lights during Fall Migration.*
• Bird migration forecast maps, BirdCast, Bird migration forecasts show predicted nocturnal migration 3 hours after local sunset and are updated every 6 hours. These forecasts come from models trained on the last 23 years of bird movements in the atmosphere as detected by the US NEXRAD weather surveillance radar network.
• Downtown Fort Worth buildings are deadly for migrating birds. Researchers are keeping track, Fort Worth Report, 17 September, 2023, Excerpts.
Before the sun rises above the downtown Fort Worth skyline, a group outfitted in reflective safety vests emerges from the Tarrant County College parking lot... They split into pairings, circling 10 downtown buildings to search for dead and injured birds on street corners or in bushes. Soon, they spot a dead warbler on the sidewalk. Volunteer April Pajoohi crouches to snap a picture before Lights Out Fort Worth coordinator Mariah Campos places the bird into a plastic bag to be sent to Texas A&M’s Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections lab.
* The daily survey is Fort Worth’s contribution to the national Lights Out campaign, which encourages building owners and residents to turn off their outdoor lighting between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. for the entirety of bird migration periods. The spring migration period lasts between March and May, while the fall stretches between September and late November.
• Lights Out, Texas! Providing Safe Passage for Nocturnal Migrants, Audubon Texas, Excerpts.
• Fall Migration: August 15 - November 30, 2023
• Peak Migration: September 6 - October 29, 2023
• Each year during fall and spring migrations, nearly two billion birds travel through Texas navigating with the night sky in one of the planet’s great wildlife spectacles.
However, as they pass over big cities on their way, they can become disoriented by bright artificial lights and skyglow, often causing them to collide with buildings or windows.
While lights can throw birds off their migration paths, bird fatalities are more directly caused by the amount of energy the birds waste flying around and calling out in confusion. The exhaustion can then leave them vulnerable to other urban threats. Just one building can cause major problems for birds in the area; within one week in 2017, nearly 400 passerines (warblers, grosbeaks, etc.) were caught in the floodlights of a 32-story Texas skyscraper and killed via window collisions.
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