In the brisk early hours of an October morning, Melissa Breyer found herself at the World Trade Center, meticulously scanning the ground around the towering skyscrapers. Her mission? To locate birds that had tragically collided with the glass facades of the buildings.

Melissa is a dedicated volunteer for Project Safe Flight, a key initiative organized by the NYC Bird Alliance. This program is committed to tracking bird collisions throughout New York City during migration seasons. For the past five years, Breyer has been faithfully walking these routes each migration season, often starting as early as 5 a.m. on days when bird collisions are anticipated to be high.

“I aim to find and account for as many birds as possible,” Breyer shared. “It pains me to think of them dying unnoticed. Each one deserves to be counted; their data is crucial.”

During the spring and fall migration seasons, millions of birds traverse the Atlantic Flyway, with many passing through New York City. Here, they face the peril of crashing into buildings, as the reflective glass surfaces and nighttime lights can be disorienting. The NYC Bird Alliance estimates that annually, between 90,000 and 230,000 birds perish due to such collisions.

Project Safe Flight was established in 1997, beginning with a small group of volunteers monitoring bird collisions in downtown Manhattan. Today, the initiative has expanded to include over 200 volunteers who patrol various locations across all five boroughs. Birds discovered alive are taken to the Wild Bird Fund for rehabilitation on the Upper West Side, while deceased birds are sent to the American Museum of Natural History for preservation and study.

Using the data reported by the volunteers, researchers at the NYC Bird Alliance are able to analyze patterns of bird collisions across the city and use their findings to advocate for change. In 2019, the New York City Council passed Local Law 15 of 2020, which requires bird-safe materials to be installed on newly constructed or altered buildings.

For Dustin Partridge, director of conservation and science at the NYC Bird Alliance, the legislation represents a big step toward a bird-friendly city.

However, he says there is much more work to be done, pointing out that artificial lights and reflective glass in many buildings still contribute significantly to the problem.

“The biggest need for New York City is lights-out legislation, something that would require lights in rooms that are unoccupied at night to go dark during spring and fall migrations, from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.,” Partridge said. “If we can get those areas dark, that would save a tremendous number of birds.”

New York City requires city-owned and city-managed buildings to turn off nonessential outdoor lighting at night during peak migration seasons, but advocates are encouraging more privately owned buildings to do the same.

Despite these challenges, Partridge says he is optimistic because of the increased public awareness of bird collisions and the nationwide efforts to address the problem.

“This is something that we can fix, it is not out of our reach,” Partridge said. “My hope is that one day I don’t have to come in and see a freezer full of dead birds, and that future is possible, but it’s going to take work to get there.”