Researchers have estimated that hundreds of millions of birds die hitting buildings every year in the United States. These strikes are believed to be one of the factors behind an almost 30 percent drop in North American birds since 1970. Chicago is one of the most dangerous cities in the country for migrating birds, according to research by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And no building was known to be more lethal than McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center.
One particular day at the building in 2013 - ~1,000 birds died.
Then, on Oct. 5, 2023, Dr. Willard climbed the lakefront steps to the building’s walkway on his routine inspection to find it littered with dead and injured birds. Shocked by the sheer volume, struggling to save the living while gathering the dead, he called a colleague for help. “They were continuing to crash as we were picking them up,” Dr. Willard recalled. The casualties were mostly warblers, but also thrushes, sparrows and others. On the way back to the museum, they carried plastic bags bulging with roughly 975 dead birds.
Dots on the windows
Some of the earliest research on how to make glass safer for birds was conducted by Daniel Klem Jr., an ornithologist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. He found that falcon silhouettes were not effective. Birds did not register them as predators and simply flew into the adjacent glass. Instead, to effectively deter birds, the glass needed a pattern over its entire surface. A distance of no more than two inches would prevent even tiny hummingbirds from trying to dart through, he said.
Eventually Ms. Clark and her team decided on the dots. The treatment cost $1.2 million, paid for by the state of Illinois. Ms. Clark chose the pattern herself, and it was installed in a hectic three-month period last summer to be in place for fall migration. Visitors don’t seem to even notice the dots from the inside, she said. She knows of no pushback.
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The vast glass windows and doors of the building, called Lakeside Center at McCormick Place, are overlaid with a pattern of close, opaque dots. Applied last summer to help birds perceive the glass, the treatment’s early results are nothing short of remarkable. During fall migration, deaths were down by about 95 percent when compared with the two previous autumns.
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Conservationists are using the building’s success as they continue a longtime campaign to implement a bird-friendly design ordinance in Chicago. “I think that may win the day for us in City Hall,” said Annette Prince, director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. “This is not just a maybe fix, this is going to make a significant difference in bird mortality, and McCormick Place is the poster child.”