The Bird-friendly city
How does a bird experience a city? A backyard? A park? As the world has become more urban, noisier from increased traffic, and brighter from streetlights and office buildings, it has also become more dangerous for countless species of birds. Warblers become disoriented by nighttime lights and collide with buildings. Ground-feeding sparrows fall prey to feral cats. Hawks and other birds-of-prey are sickened by rat poison. These name just a few of the myriad hazards. How do our cities need to change in order to reduce the threats, often created unintentionally, that have resulted in nearly three billion birds lost in North America alone since the 1970s?
In The Bird-Friendly City, Timothy Beatley, a longtime advocate for intertwining the built and natural environments, takes readers on a global tour of cities that are reinventing the status quo with birds in mind. Efforts span a fascinating breadth of approaches: public education, urban planning and design, habitat restoration, architecture, art, civil disobedience, and more. Beatley shares empowering examples, including: advocates for “catios,” enclosed outdoor spaces that allow cats to enjoy backyards without being able to catch birds; a public relations campaign for vultures; and innovations in building design that balance aesthetics with preventing bird strikes. Through these changes and the others Beatley describes, it is possible to make our urban environments more welcoming to many bird species.
Readers will come away motivated to implement and advocate for bird-friendly changes, with inspiring examples to draw from. Whether birds are migrating and need a temporary shelter or are taking up permanent residence in a backyard, when the environment is safer for birds, humans are happier as well.
Presentation to Audubon | Planning the Bird-Friendly City | Feb. 17, 2021
CODES AND GUIDELINES
New York City Local Law 15 (2020) - Guidance Document
San Francisco Standards for Bird-Safe Buildings (San Francisco Planning Code § 139)
Tegan Jarchow. Bird-friendly Window and Lighting Standards. JD Brown & Jonathan Rosenbloom (eds). Sustainable Development Code.
ARTICLES
Tim Beatley (Jan. 2023). The Promise of Bird-Friendly Cities. mylivablecity.
Sebastian McCarthy (March 4, 2021). Why we must let birdsong be heard in our cities again. Property Week.
Nate Berg (Feb. 8, 2021). Why cities should be designed for birds. Fast Company.
John C. Cannon (Nov. 30, 2020). The promise of ‘bird-friendly’ cities: Q&A with author Timothy Beatley. Mongabay.
Resources to Make Your Home, Community or City More Bird-Friendly
Genevieve Zircher. 2023. “Bird-Friendly Indianapolis: Developing a Guide to Supporting Urban Avian Populations for the Benefit of Birds and Humans Alike.” Ball State University. (Bird-Friendly Indianapolis Guide)
Bird Safe-City: Bird-Safe Design Guidelines for the Biophilic City. Ecological Design Lab. Authors: Khan, Mona; Nomani, Maaha; Deer, Susan; Chiefari, Christina; Nash, Rachael; Perreault, Guillaume. 2023.
Building Safer Cities for Birds: How Cities Are Leading the Way on Bird-Friendly Building Policy By Meredith Barges and Viveca Morris (August 2023). Report from the Yale Law School and American Bird Conservancy with case studies on partner cities San Francisco and Arlington.
BirdCast. Realtime predications of bird migrations.
Bird Friendly City: A Certification Program. Nature Canada.
Jim and Doreen Cubie. Consumer Guide to Bird Window Strike Prevention.
The Warblers by Birds Canada. Podcast Andres Jiménez and Andrea Gress for Birds Canada.
