Cities Are for the Birds

By Timothy Beatley

Bird watching and professional football are two topics that rarely intersect. Yet, in the land of the Minneapolis Vikings, birders are unhappy about the design of the team's new stadium. At issue is the immense amount of clear glass, something that proves fatal to many birds.

A 2014 study published in BioOne estimates that between 365 and 988 million birds are killed each year in collisions with buildings, especially windows. The solution in this case — the local Audubon chapter and others are advocates — would be the use of bird-friendly fritted glass, something the Minnesota Sports Facility Authority, which is building the stadium, balks at because of cost. The approach would add about $1 million to the facility's $1 billion price tag, although energy savings could help recoup the extra cost.

The controversy provides an interesting view on how important birds are (or are not) to urbanites, and the ways city design can help or hinder their thriving.

For the most part we are oblivious to the winged creatures flying around us in cities. We are understandably smitten with other species, like primates and cetaceans, for their intelligence and self-awareness. As it turns out, these are qualities exhibited by many birds, especially corvids (crows, ravens, and jays), which are common occupants of urban and suburban spaces.

John Marzluff, a professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington, has been studying American crows and other corvids for most of his career. That species has a remarkable ability to remember human faces. Marzluff's experiments involved members of his research team wearing masks (one of a caveman) while trapping and banding crows. Even years after the trapping has occurred, these crows recognize these "dangerous" masks and people.

In an interview last year, Marzluff told me about a recent walk around the Washington campus — some eight years after the masked trapping experiment. He wore the caveman mask and was almost immediately scolded by crows, but the many other humans out and about were not. The birds' memory and intelligence is notable enough, but since several of the crows had not been born at the time of the experiment, it shows the species' ability to pass along information to subsequent generations and to adapt to information about the human world.

In the realm of YouTube, the antics and surprising behavior of corvids is the stuff of viral videos, like the one of the Russian crow that repeatedly slides down the snowy roof of an apartment building using a plastic lid, clearly engaged in human-like play. The more we know about the birds that co-occupy human spaces, the more we are likely to care about what happens to them.

Crows and other corvids offer us an emotional bridge between humans and other forms of life. Marzluff's recent work analyzing the brain scans of crows (an interesting and unusual collaboration with radiologists) shows that danger recognition occurs in the same place in the brain as in humans, the amygdala. Such research "resonates with people ... and does allow them to engage common wildlife a little more deeply."

Crows adapt well to urban environments, and there is a lot to like about sharing space with them, Marzluff said. But their populations have grown exponentially in many places, especially West Coast cities. That boom, fueled by great conditions — lots of grass, few trees, supplemental food in the form of garbage — comes at a cost. Cities are "over-supplementing one species at a potential detriment to others," noted Marzluff. "So you're tending to homogenize or reduce diversity in some of the most built, most uniformly developed areas."

The solution? Think about and plan for habitat diversity at the regional level. In his new book, Subirdia, Marzluff makes the case for the important habitat values of suburbs, especially for birds. "Where we found the highest diversity of birds is in the suburbs, where you have a mixture of land covers and land types." The message is not meant to be anti-urban, but it shows the need for a diverse mosaic of habitats in a metropolitan area.

Judging a city by its birdsong?

Many cities over the last decade have made remarkable strides in taking birdlife into account in their design and planning. Toronto and Chicago have lights-out programs during peak migration times, and New York and San Francisco have adopted bird-friendly design standards.

In many other cities, including Portland, Oregon, bird conservation efforts are led by nongovernmental organizations, such as the Portland Audubon chapter, which boasts 15,000 members, one of the group's largest chapters. Among other things, they organize outings and classes, the annual Christmas Bird Count, and hold an annual tour of "catios" (outside enclosures that humanely keep felines from stalking and killing birds.)

Bird watching is natural therapy on many levels, and bird songs and calls are calming and place-fixing. Cities should aspire to an abundance and diversity of birdlife as an important — actually essential — element in the quality of urban life and a key measure of urban sustainability.

Which brings us back to the Vikings Stadium. Minneapolis has the chance to stake out a position on behalf of birds, as a city that understands that it shares the world with other species and has an ethical obligation to minimize the harm and danger it inflicts. The additional cost is a small part of the total price tag for the construction of the facility, smaller still when one considers the educational and example-setting benefits such a move would provide.

In December, the Vikings leadership announced intentions to explore, with the help of local firm 3M, a film that might be applied to the glass later (no such product currently exists). This is a positive step, but MSFA's opposition to the bird-friendly glass seems at odds with the growing appreciation of and value given to birds in the urban setting, and is inconsistent with the emerging larger public interest that takes into account the intrinsic value of non-human life.\

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Biophilic Cities Project.

Resources

Image: Crows are at home in Bothell, Washington, part of the Seattle metropolitan area. Photo by John Marzluff.