(Note: This meeting and presentation took place online, via Zoom, due to social distancing protocols prompted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.)
At 7:00 pm, President Rochelle Thomas called the meeting of the Society to order. After introducing herself, she thanked the attendees for joining. President Thomas noted that members who have not paid their dues could do so online or via mail.
Motion 1: President Thomas announced the results of a new-member vote, which passed with 144 votes of approval and 1 of disapproval.
The Society welcomed the following eleven new members:
- Christophe Illemassene, Active, sponsored by Kristin Ellington
- Charles Tang, Active, sponsored by Mary Beth Kooper
- Sheila Epstein, Active, sponsored by Chuck McAlexander
- Richard Madonna, Active, sponsored by Paul Sweet
- Valerie Hartman, Active, sponsored by Kristin Ellington
- Leslie Mireille Fiske, Active, sponsored by Mary Beth Kooper
- Julie Floyd, Active, sponsored by Elise Boeger
- C Peter Davenport, Active, sponsored by Junko Suzuki
- Leslie Minniti, Supporting, sponsored by Elise Boeger
- Nora Benoliel, Active, sponsored by Sylvia Alexander
- Lilah Burke, Active, sponsored by Janet Wooten
Motion 2: President Thomas then announced the result of the online vote to approve the minutes of the May 2022 members’ meeting. The vote passed with 145 votes of approval and 0 of disapproval. The final copy has been updated with member suggestions.
At 7:10 pm, President Thomas introduced the evening’s speaker, Annie Novak.
Annie Novak is an urban farmer, author, and activist. Annie is the founder and director of Growing Chefs, a field-to-fork food education program; the manager of the Edible Academy at the New York Botanical Garden; and co-founder and farmer of the nation’s first commercial green-roof farm, the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn, New York. Annie is the author and illustrator of The Rooftop Growing Guide: How to Transform Your Roof into a Garden or Farm (Ten Speed Press). For her efforts to green the city landscape, Annie was recognized by the Audubon Society’s Women in Conservation program. Annie writes for Living Bird and Bird Conservation, among other publications, and lectures on the history of and the technology used to study nocturnal bird migration over the changing North American landscape. Annie has served on the board of the American Bird Conservancy since 2018.
A Thousand and One Nights: Illuminating Nocturnal Bird Migration
On any given day, up to 400 billion individual birds can be found soaring, swimming, flying, hopping, and moving around Planet Earth. For most of human history, the appearance and disappearance, and reemergence, of birds were not well understood, but by the 20th and 21st centuries, our understanding of bird migration has massively increased. Not all birds migrate, but more than three-quarters of North American birds and one-third of the world’s bird species are migratory.
We are used to birds that migrate during the daytime, such as Canada Geese, hawks, falcons, hummingbirds, swifts, swallows, pelicans, and many more, but another world exists in the night sky. Most migratory land birds, songbirds, and shorebirds take to the air after sunset and remain aloft until dawn because the atmosphere is cooler and smoother, making flight easier and less calorically intense. Darkness also provides protection from predation—it is safer to fly under cover of darkness. Nocturnally migrating birds can use the moon and stars, as well as the glow of sunrise and sunset, and/or the magnetic poles to help orient themselves.
New York City is an incredible place to study migrations. Of the more than 1000 birds that exist in North America, 476 pass through the east coast, and of this group, 386 are visitors or residents of New York City. Within the five boroughs, New York City has over 20,000 acres of natural landscape, including grasslands, meadows, freshwater and saltwater rivers, and ocean; and 7,000 acres of forest, including 50 acres of old-growth forest at the NY Botanical Garden. This diversity supports a wide variety of birds, including Cedar Waxwings, Bobolinks, Baltimore Orioles, and more.
Artificial light at night is very disturbing for birds. Under the influence of light, birds fly lower and more slowly in their flight path, risking exhaustion or collision with structures. Additionally, artificial lights urge birds towards the urban landscape and away from green space, which is crucial for food and shelter during migration. In the United States alone, up to a billion birds a year die from striking glass windows. Over the last few decades, many North American cities have adopted lights-out practices, darkening their skylines during peak migration periods to protect the biology and local ecology of birds, insects, and animals.
NYC Audubon takes the lead in working with the National September 11th Memorial Museum Tribute in Light, monitoring the presence of birds to ensure that the beauty of the memorial does not interfere with their safe passage. Based on this partnership, the museum can turn the lights off when large numbers of birds get trapped, allowing them to fly away.
Bird banding, geo-tracking, Christmas bird counts, and other community science programs have helped us make better maps of their worlds. Bird banding, in particular, has provided a lot of data. It follows a four-part process: birds are caught in mist nets, banded, and measured, or time-released, and the information is entered into a database. Aluminum bands are sized to the species and placed around the individual’s leg. Data is collected during banding, including the band number, date and time of day of banding, age, sex, and something called the wing cord, which is the distance from the wrist to the end of the primary feather, the longest primary wing feather. Often banders will collect data about weight and fat condition, molt status, or the condition of their feathers—all to determine how well prepared the birds are for migration. Some banders will also measure things like the length of the tail, the wingspan, the hallux (the big toenail on a bird), or the beak length.
These banding stations can be found throughout the world, but only three percent of banded birds are ever recovered, so scientists have developed additional tools to study bird movement, including solar-powered GPS transmitters that use cellular networks to record the three dimensions of latitude, longitude, and altitude at programmable intervals. These devices can give extraordinarily accurate recordings of birds’ movements, which can help us understand their behavior, their response to the weather and climate changes, etc., without ever having to burden or disturb the bird beyond the gentle initial application of the device.
Perhaps the most powerful tool for our understanding of the night sky, as well as for conservation purposes, is the use of radar. Radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) is the use of radio waves to pick up and manage the location and speed of objects. Now there are four types of radar, and you can use all of them to study bird movements. What is truly incredible about this technology is that there is a powerful list of questions that radar can answer:
- What time of day do birds migrate?
- How many hours of the day or night are they flying?
- Do migrants stop moving when it rains, or during high winds?
- How fast are they moving?
- How high are they?
- In what direction are they going?
- Are they in flocks?
These are all questions that observers have been trying to ascertain from the ground for decades, if not centuries or millennia, and radar can provide answers. Radar has also confirmed pronounced migratory pathways, for example, the Atlantic coastline, the Mississippi River, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific coastline.
Birding changes how we look at the world. It inspires our advocacy for our Planet Earth and for protecting animals. Our scientific advances have increased our understanding and appreciation of birds, while simultaneously, the landscapes where birds live are disappearing faster than ever. There are many opportunities to get involved and to help protect these incredible animals, including New York City Audubon’s Project Safe Flight and the American Bird Conservancy.
Ms. Novack offered her heartfelt thanks to the audience and the Linnaean Society for encouraging her to dig deeper into topics like this. She included a link to resources to understand nocturnal bird migration better.
The evening ended with the Linnaean Society thanking the speaker for sharing her fascinating body of work.