Glassy PLG Tower Bad News for Birds, Says Expert
Scores of migrating birds would smash into the glassy 23-story tower planned in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, on Lincoln Road and Flatbush Avenues, creating a mess on the crowded sidewalks below, said Prospect Park Audubon Center senior naturalist Gabriel Willow. He said adjacent Prospect Park, at 585 acres, is a popular resting place for birds along the…

Scores of migrating birds would smash into the glassy 23-story tower planned in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, on Lincoln Road and Flatbush Avenues, creating a mess on the crowded sidewalks below, said Prospect Park Audubon Center senior naturalist Gabriel Willow. He said adjacent Prospect Park, at 585 acres, is a popular resting place for birds along the Atlantic Flyway, and added that glass towers in Manhattan near smaller, less popular parks have been the death of hundreds of birds a year. “You’ll just find the ground littered with birds,” he said. Tom Gilman of Gilman Architects didn’t respond when asked if his design took migrating birds into consideration (the flock was added to the rendering). Meanwhile, developer Henry Herbst said he’s been busy polling the community about their preference for the ground floor retail compenentso far, they’re leaning toward a bank and organic market, even though the short block already has two non-organic markets. Herbst said, “They claim there’s no organic foods in the area,” which is basically true. Cage-free hens, anyone?
Wings Meet Deadly Glass [NY Times]
Form Follows Feathers: Bird-Friendly Architecture [Architectural Record]
Lefferts Gardens Gets a Few New Arrivals [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]
what can we do for the wounded and disoriented hipsters who have lost their way between williamsburg and bushwick?
you should add bird unfriendliness to the list of why ms brooklyn should not be built.
quote all the “studies” you want, this concern is not going to hold water wrt this building in view of the staggering multitude of buildings throught this city that raise the same concern. that is the point i’m trying to make.
Bird-safe glass is called Ornilux, made by Isolar in Germany. They should make these guys use it.
How active are you in collecting and euthanizing feral cats then, 6:59?
Because the domestic cat population kills far more songbirds in the U.S. than buildings. To the extent some songbirds are going extinct.
I’ll believe the opposition to this building truly care about the birds when they start gathering up the feral cats too.
Tap…tap…
Waiting…
“And I can’t imagine that the Parks Dept would allow such a thing to be built as a result.”
You mean the way they didn’t allow tall buildings around Central Park?
Right.
I work in a new glass building in midtown. We wondered when we first moved in why we kept seeing dead and disoriented birds near the employee entrance. Flip commenters don’t have a clue; the Park is a vital stop for migrating birds, and this building will kill them, period.
“Anything proposed to be built close to PRospect Park can literally be vetoed by the NYC Parks Dept. This is a little known but true old law on the books that has doomed other similar proposals in other nabes adjacent to Prospect Park”.
3:52,
Do you have any reference for this? I’d really like for it to be true. I don’t know if it would prevent this building from proceeding, but it might be the kiss of death for the proposed POS around the corner at 185 Ocean Avenue.
http://bstoner.wpengine.com/brownstoner/archives/2008/01/plg_house_razed.php
There’s some factory in Germany that makes special glass that has something that’s embedded in the glass that birds can see but humans can’t. They’re using it for a new building on the Zoo grounds in the Bronx. Wish I could remember the name or find the reference, but if someone wanted to badly enough, they could. Expense-wise, I don’t know the deal.
I think the building looks cool.
“With our cities, humans have inadvertently created a landscape that is intrinsically perilÂous for migratory birds. Nocturnally migrating birds can be disoriented by light and become “trapped†by illuminated structures. Throughout modern history, “clouds of birds†have been observed fluttering around lit-up structures, such as lighthouses, bridges and skyscrapers…Trapped like moths at a porch light, the birds are vulnerable to colliding with the structures or even each other. Birds that don’t strike the building eventually become exhausted and take refuge in nearby trees or shrubs.
Once in the urban environment, birds often collide with windows, either because the glass is transparent, and shows a potted plant inside, or reflective, and mirrors the surrounding area. Both types effectively mask the solid nature of glass, which the birds are unable to perceive as a barrier. As a result, window strikes are believed to be a major source of bird mortality. Some experts maintain that after habitat destruction, glass poses a greater threat to birds than any other human product or activity. A conservative estimate puts the number of birds killed annually in the U.S. by striking window at 100 million—one bird for every building.
Individual office buildings kill many more. Between April 1997 and May 2001, NYCAS volunteers found at the World Financial Center 720 dead or injured birds of 63 differÂent species. Seventeen of those species are experiencing significant long-term population declines. These totals reflect only the birds actually found; the vast majority of casualties went undocumented. With just a handful of volunteers providing limited coverage, many more birds were swept up by cleaning staff or scavenged by predators (cats, rats, gulls, etc).
Two hundred twenty-five species—25% of all bird species in North America—have been documented as colliding with windows. This is not natural selection, which removes individuals that are least likely to survive and reproduce. Collisions affect both adult and juvenile birds, whether fit or unfit.
In Toronto, volunteers with the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) found 15,036 window-strike casualties between 1993 and 2000. FLAP calculates that some 10,000 birds are killed or injured each year in downtown Toronto alone.
Multiply these numbers by all the cities that lie between birds’ breeding grounds in northÂern Canada and their wintering grounds in Central or South America, and you have a sigÂnificant source of mortality. What makes these deaths all the more regrettable is the fact that they could be prevented. Any measures to avert further mortality could save millions of birds and make a difference in species’ long-term survival.”