I'm going to be at a school on Friday for their Eco Week talking about birds, as it is a switch off day as well I'd like to add something about the effects of lighting on birds. Found a few bits and pieces but does anyone have any other interesting incidences surrounding birds and street lights? I have robins singing in winter, wildfowl colliding with buildings and grasshopper warblers dying at lighthouses so far :-)
Mille & Fly on Facebook
Very good question.We have just had our yard light replaced free of charge by the council.It`s huge.No more hedgehogs,foxes or bats passing by.The birds seem to be unaffected but 24 hour light in our house is a real pain.
I hate light at night, it really disrupts my sleep lol
I've just added the crows in Japan that use traffic lights to my list, something a bit lighter to add to the mix (that bad pun is NOT intentional!)
Tried puns once.Didnt work.In fact no pun in ten did.
The plus side of the light tale is that the old junction box (underneath left & not used for years)had tits nesting last year and the wrens were checking it out today.
The BTO did some really interesting 'citizen science' on this with their garden birdwatcher's network. They asked people to watch what species arrived first on their bird tables from first light in winter, and showed that the order in which birds tend to appear correlates nicely with eyeball size - i.e. birds with bigger eyes are active slightly ahead of small-eyed birds!
They also did some work that looked into whether the 'heat island' effect in urban areas influenced garden bird behaviour more than the artificially high levels of light. Just search the Internet for "Are Urban Birds Lazy" and you'll get loads on this story.
Good luck tomorrow.
Colin
And something else - there are a few records of nightjars actively hunting close to floodlights, on the moths attracted to them. So lights aren't always bad!
Interestingt stuff thre colin! Thank you very much - the heat effect is certainly interesting. I'm wondering though if this could have a counter effect in summer - as urban areas get hotter in summer could this make it more difficult for birds to find areas to nest that don't risk overheating the nest?
Gulls have also adapted to the increase in artificial light in urban areas, making use of the light to increase their foraging time. They seem to have cottoned on to the late night kebab and chip eating habits of humans in the UK coastal towns and can regularly be seen flying about the streets in the early hours.
One thing to note is that robins nocturnal song through winter is not always triggered by artificial light. Many of the robins are singing in pitch black. This is a territorial behaviour by the robin that signifies occupation of a winter territory. In the long winter nights the robin will sleep for some of it but will make use of some of the darkness hours to tell the other local robins that they are there and in good form.
I think there has been quite a bit of research into the negative effects artificial light can have on bats, the link here might be of interest. There is also a campaign for dark skies website.
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