After five months of winter’s white and the only bird sounds being the descending cackle of the wild turkeys, it’s so refreshing to look skyward and see some pops of color and hear the honk of Canada Geese and the warbles and chatters of songbirds as the spring migration is underway.
Every year, billions of birds migrate in the spring and fall, mostly flying in the dark and navigating by the night sky. And every year, tens of thousands of these birds die along the way from disorientation and collisions caused by artificial lights and what the International Dark-Sky Association calls “skyglow” — “the brightness of the night sky in a built-up area as a result of light pollution.”
To address this problem, in 1999 the Audubon Society launched a program called Lights Out, which is a national network of cities committed to “convincing building owners and managers to turn off excess lighting during the months migrating birds are flying overhead” in order to provide birds with “safe passage between their nesting and wintering grounds.” I became aware of the Lights Out program from Linda Speck, a Carlton resident who recently reminded me of the role dark skies play in bird migration.
Thanks to the efforts of the Methow Dark Sky Coalition, we are a fairly dark community. In fact, on the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale we measure a 2-4 out of nine levels, with 1 being the darkest possible and 9 being the brightness of the inner-city sky. If you’ve ever been in a 9 environment, you know that 2-4 is pretty darn dark. But if you’ve ever been in 1-level environments, well, wow — 2-4 feels exceedingly illuminated. Regardless of our decent Bortle rating, however, there are things we can do to improve the darkness around our towns, especially during these periods of bird migration.
Although Washington doesn’t have a formal Audubon Lights Out program, participating in Lights Out unofficially is pretty easy. Like the name suggests in wording that could be no more explicit, the basic principle is to turn the lights out. That’s right! Lights Out means go to the lights and turn them out.
If that’s too broad or vague for you, consider these specific actions, outlined by Lights Out: turn off exterior decorative lighting; extinguish floodlights; substitute strobe lighting whenever possible; turn off interior lighting, especially on higher floors of buildings; down-shield exterior lighting; install automatic motion sensors instead of leaving exterior lights on.
However you want to do it, the ultimate goal is more dark and less light during bird migration season, which is now. Save on your electric bill, save the life of some birds — it’s all one big win for wildlife and for the wonders of the night sky.
For more information about North Central WA Audubon Society, visit ncwaudubon.org.
