This has been the ornithological spectacle of my entire life. Intellectually I knew that this sort of thing had to happen, at least occasionally, but to actually stand in one place for hour after hour and watch a steady flow pass just a few feet from you is like watching a major river. And attempting to quantify the flow is about like trying to count water in a river. I suspect that very few people on this planet have seen what I have seen in the last 12 hours. It is a spell- binding feeling I will carry to my grave.
Migratory birds travel great distances across land and sea each season.
Watch for suggestions in each migration update. Daniel Klem, from Muhlenberg College in PA, has estimated that windows may kill up to 100 million birds per year. This upper figure represents about 5 percent of the 20 billion birds found in the United States, according to publication by Ruthe Smith and Joe Schaefer of the Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, Gainesville. Because many people put feeders close to windows, collisions during winter are as common as those that occur during migration. Whether the glass is clear, opaque, or reflective makes no difference.