An Illinois Building Was a Bird Killer, killing 1,000 one day. A Simple Change Made a World of Difference.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/climate/mccormick-place-chicago-birds.html

An Illinois Building Was a Bird Killer. A Simple Change Made a World of Difference.
Chicago is one of the most dangerous cities in the United States for migrating birds, and a glassy lakefront conference center was especially lethal.




These birds, inhabitants of forests and grasslands, do not perceive glass as solid and get confused by its reflections. Bright city lights seem to attract them, luring them into glassy canyons. The gleaming buildings of Chicago, curving along the shore of Lake Michigan, are especially lethal.

A call went out to volunteers across the city: Be ready to hit the streets early to rescue the injured and document the dead.

But at the building that has long been the city’s most notorious bird killer, a sprawling lakefront conference venue that claimed almost a thousand birds on a single day in October 2023, new protections were in place.

The vast glass windows and doors of the building, called Lakeside Center at McCormick Place, are overlaid with a pattern of close, opaque dots. Applied last summer to help birds perceive the glass, the treatment’s early results are nothing short of remarkable. During fall migration, deaths were down by about 95 percent when compared with the two previous autumns.