Cheer City Councilmember Moya, Bird Champion

While birders around the city enjoy the peak spring bird migration, stalking the wilds of Central Park and other green spaces in the five boroughs, tens of thousands of our feathered friends meet their untimely deaths by window collision. 

This week city Councilmember Francisco Moya introduced legislation that could save many of these migratory birds, simply by dimming the lights.

Every spring, millions of birds soar through the city on their journey along the Atlantic Flyway from wintering in South and Central America. The birds are on their way to breeding grounds in the north, some of them as far off as the Arctic Circle. In the fall the flyers retrace their odyssey.  Many – between 90,000 and 200,000 of them, according to NYC Audubon – won’t get past New York City.  Disoriented by nighttime lighting, they smash into skyscraper windows.

“Light attracts and disorients birds, especially artificial light at night,” Jessica Wilson, executive director of NYC Audubon, told Gothamist. Migratory birds typically fly at night, and “they can be drawn in from hundreds of miles away to urban areas like New York City, which are just aglow with artificial light,” she said.

Moya’s bill is simple enough. It would “prohibit nighttime illumination of the exterior or interior” of many of the tallest buildings, and it would come with accommodating exceptions – for small stores, landmarks, and “special circumstances indicating a need for night security.”

Even a partial shutdown, a dimming of the lights as it were, can save many birds. A recent study in Chicago found that turning off half of the lights in a building can reduce bird collisions by six to 11 times, depending on the time of year. That’s a lot of feathers.

Moya’s bill is a reboot of 2021 legislation that was shot down by the powerful and evil Real Estate Board of New York, which said in its testimony at the time that “realizing the goals of this law would dramatically disrupt the operations of commercial buildings.”  Oh Ha..

“If this bill passes, this would be landmark legislation,” Wilson said. “It could be a model for the rest of the nation, which is how New York City should be.”

Photo credit: Kenneth Herdy / NYC Audubon