Early Monday morning, Patricia Scanlon walked along the streets of downtown Norfolk, peering down every alleyway and scanning each building’s perimeter.
Scanlon and other members of the Cape Henry Audubon Society are out here bright and early seven days a week, with a somewhat macabre task: searching for dead birds.
Home to tall buildings with expansive glass windows and artificial light, downtown Norfolk is a hotspot for bird collisions.
As the creatures migrate across the Atlantic Flyway — a sort of major avian highway along the East Coast — “they're attracted by the lights, and it brings them into the city,” Scanlon said.
“They can't get out, so they start smashing into all the glass windows,” she said. “What we find are birds that either flew in the last night or as the sun comes up in the morning.”
Millions of birds migrate through Hampton Roads each spring and fall, using the coastline to guide their journey in addition to mountain ranges like the Appalachians.
But in recent decades, bird populations nationwide have dramatically declined – an across the board drop of nearly 30% since 1970, according to recent research. There are several reasons why, including habitat loss and the use of insecticides.
Building strikes are another major problem. Birds see trees reflected in the glass or confuse lights for stars that naturally guide them, and fly straight into windows.
Scanlon said she’s found about 260 birds in downtown Norfolk just this fall. She makes contacts with security guards and other local officials who help alert her when they see one.
On Monday, she and other volunteers came across a dead white-throated sparrow outside the Scope Arena, as well as two American woodcocks near the MacArthur Memorial and ADP office buildings.
Scanlon bent down to collect one of the dead woodcocks.
“You can see it’s a broken neck,” she said, carefully placing the roughly 10-inch specimen inside a Ziploc bag.
At each collision site, she takes a photo and records details like the time, weather, location and species onto a naturalist phone app. Most of the samples go to her home freezer and eventually a biology lab at Old Dominion University.
Sometimes, the Audubon Society finds a bird that is injured but still alive. On Monday, someone in the Berkley neighborhood called to report an injured American bittern, a type of heron.
In those cases, the volunteers – who are legally licensed to do so – keep the bird warm, load it into a crate and take it to a local wildlife rehabilitator.
The daily surveys downtown started earlier this year during the spring migration season.
Scanlon said she was inspired to action after reading about devastating bird strikes in Chicago and North Carolina. “I was so heartbroken.”
In addition to recording bird collisions, they advocate for local officials and property owners to take action by turning off lights overnight — or at least dimming them and using curtains.
They’ve had mixed success. Most big buildings downtown — including City Hall and the city courthouse — are still always brightly lit.
Scanlon said advocates are also concerned about Norfolk's upcoming rollout of LED streetlights.
The city received $3 million from the federal government to convert all of its 28,000 streetlights to be more energy-efficient and boost safety.
But Scanlon said the bulbs the city chose are too bright for wildlife, as well as humans trying to sleep.
“These lights appear as daylight,” she said.
Bird experts prefer LED streetlights with a deeper amber or warm white light.
The fall migration season runs through about mid-November. Scanlon said they plan to walk the route year-round.
If you find an injured bird in Hampton Roads, you can call or text the Tidewater Wildlife Rescue hotline at 757-255-8710.
