Project Safe Flight Studies Bird-Building Collisions Across Georgia

Common Yellowthroat, by Sarah Tolve.

by Dottie Head, Director of Communications

This spring, Birds Georgia will kick off the ninth year of Project Safe Flight Georgia, a project to study bird-building collisions across the state. Since the program began in 2015, volunteers have collected data from more than 4,200 birds representing 135 different species that perished after colliding with buildings. Recently, Project Safe Flight was extended to coastal Georgia with volunteers patrolling routes in Savannah and Brunswick as well as continuing routes in metro Atlanta.
 
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds continue to be the most commonly found species, followed by Tennessee Warbler, Swainson’s Thrush, Cedar Waxwing, and Ovenbird. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Wood Thrush, American Robin, Common Yellowthroat, and Red-eyed Vireo round out the 10 most commonly collected species by Project Safe Flight volunteers.
 
Current research estimates that between 350 million and 1 billion birds perish each year from colliding with buildings in the U.S. Attracted by nighttime lights and confused by daytime reflections of habitat in shiny windows, many birds become disoriented and fly into the buildings, ending their journeys and their lives prematurely.
 
“Birds Georgia launched Project Safe Flight in 2015 to gain a better understanding of the bird-building collision problem across Georgia,” says Adam Betuel, Birds Georgia’s director of conservation. “We have been studying what species are most likely to collide with buildings, how many birds are affected, and what parts of the state are most problematic. Since the program began, we’ve learned a lot about how and where building collisions are occurring, and we’ve implemented some programs and changes to help reduce collisions and make Georgia safer for migrating birds.”
 
Monitored sites included public sidewalks, private businesses, university campuses, and a handful of government buildings. Each spring and fall, Project Safe Flight Georgia volunteers patrol predetermined routes across the state collecting birds that have collided with buildings. Patrols run from late March through May each spring and again from mid-August to mid-November in the late summer and fall, covering peak migration months for many species. 
 
There are several ways the public can help. One of the easiest is to reduce nighttime lighting during peak migration periods. The Lights Out Georgia program was designed to encourage homeowners and commercial properties to turn off nighttime lights from midnight to 6 AM during peak migration. New migration forecasting technology has allowed Birds Georgia to predict nights of extremely high bird migration and issues Lights Out Alerts for evenings of peak migratory activity.  For more information or to sign up, please visit our Lights Out Georgia page. 
 
More information on how to make your home bird-safe, to sign up as a Project Safe Flight Volunteer, or to report dead birds you find at your home or workplace, please visit the Project Safe Flight Georgia page. 
 
Birds Georgia will host a Project Safe Flight webinar on Tuesday, April 9, at 7:00 PM to share information about bird-building collisions and causes, and to discuss ways we can make our homes and cities safer. Sarah Tolve, Bird Georgia's coastal conservation coordinator, will provide an overview of Birds Georgia's Project Safe Flight program and share how volunteers can get involved. Learn how monitoring efforts are conducted on the ground, how to report sightings, what is being done with this data, and what we’ve learned (and how the program has grown) since Project Safe Flight Launched in 2015. The program is free to attend, and sign up is now available on our upcoming  events page.