I think many of us have at some point thought how fun it would be to be a bird… soar the skies and enjoy nature.  To be a bird… what a nice life!  Yes, I’m sure it is.  But it’s also a really tough life for the roughly 20 billion birds that live in the U.S., and surviving to die of old age is probably rather rare in the bird world.

Mother Nature herself is not kind!  Predators, whether other birds, mammals, or reptiles, are always hungry, looking for a meal.  Inclement weather, including storms, cold, and extreme heat takes a toll.  Food and water sources dry up and habitats change. There are so many natural threats to birds it’s a wonder very many even grow up to adulthood.   As if that weren’t enough, the modern bird faces so many more threats.

Windows allow us sunlight and a view into nature.  We need that to survive and live a nice healthy life.  Window strikes by birds also cause over one billion bird deaths per year in the U.S.!  That’s a huge number.  One billion!  Birds don’t see the glass, thinking it’s an opening to fly through.  Often the window is reflecting views of trees and it looks natural to a bird.  Tall buildings in cities that leave lights on at night attract migrating birds which contributes to the massive number of window strikes.
Cell towers kill an estimated 7 million birds annually in the U.S.  The birds are attracted to the white lights on the towers at night, circling the tower till they strike one of the steel cables holding the tower up.  Wind turbines kill large numbers of birds annually as well, but I don’t think we know how many.

Car strikes are the cause of another 80 million bird lives lost per year in the U.S.  This is another huge number of casualties, caused mostly by birds not being able to judge vehicle speed to help them avoid the collision.  This is of course a danger to humans as well.

We use a huge amount of disposable plastic items every day, and most are not recycled.  Bottle caps, straws, and wrappers all end up in the environment.  Sea birds are particularly affected by this, as plastic flows into rivers and oceans where birds mistake them for food.  Even inland birds are found dead with bellies full of plastic.  Not long ago several endangered California Condors were found dead from this.

Lead has long been a bird killer.  Fishing weights (sinkers) and lead shot from guns are picked up by water birds and eaten, slowly killing them.  Over 100,000 birds are estimated to die in the U.S. from lead each year.

Industrial, household and agricultural chemicals are much better regulated today, and are not quite the killer they once were, but birds still die from them each year.  To the tune of about 100 million a year.  This often happens by a slow buildup of the chemical inside the bird, but large die offs by exposure still happen every year.
Many of us enjoy a nice morning of fishing along the coast.  However fishing line left discarded along beaches and jetties are a death penalty for birds. Birds get tangled up and can’t fly, starving to death.  Some get hooks caught in their throats with the same result.

There are millions of house cat lovers in the U.S.  I am one of them, but I only keep them indoors.   There are tens of millions of outdoor cats in the U.S. and they are estimated to kill an average of 2.4 billion birds per year in the U.S.!   Cats are good at hunting birds.

There are some solutions and ways we can help protect the longevity and health of our feathered friend’s lives. Here are a few web sites with further information:
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Page.aspx%3Fpid%3D1184
http://www.audubon.org/news/how-flashing-lights-cell-towers-can-save-birds-lives
https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/

Martin Hagne is the Executive Director of the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory.  The GCBO is a non-profit organization dedicated to saving the birds and their habitats along the entire Gulf Coast, and beyond into their Central and South America wintering grounds.