Most early mornings in the spring and fall, as he has done for more than four decades, David Willard goes out to gather the dead.
Most early mornings in the spring and fall, as he has done for more than four decades, David Willard goes out to gather the dead. A retired curator of birds at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, Willard walks the mile from his office, in the dark, to pick up the thrushes, warblers, sparrows, and other migrating birds that have met their end against the glass walls of McCormick Place, a giant modernist rectangle on the Lake Michigan shore. The dead birds go into a plastic grocery bag. Those that are stunned but still alive he slips into a paper sandwich bag, to be released later in the brush on a nearby hill.
Originally built in 1960 in a city park, McCormick Place is the largest convention center in North America. Thanks to the diligence of Willard and his colleagues, it has also earned a wide reputation as a killer of birds. On a good day during migration season, he might find half a dozen dead birds; on a bad day, maybe 100. Earlier this month, a rare combination of weather and migratory patterns brought clouds of birds flying down the Lake Michigan shore. Willard found 966 dead at McCormick Place, mostly warblers. Nearly 100 others had hit the building but were still alive. “It was scary,” Willard said.
Read more at: Yale Environment 360
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