05/14/2025
Let’s take care of our flying friends!!
Migration Alert for the night of 13 May 2025
The BirdCast model predicts high-intensity bird migration over your region tonight. Large numbers of birds will be flying! To protect migratory birds in your area, BirdCast and partners recommend turning off all non-essential lighting between 11:00 PM tonight and 6:00 AM tomorrow morning:
turn off or dim any non-essential exterior building lighting;
close curtains or blinds to reduce the escape of interior lighting; and
avoid illuminating lobbies, plants or fountains that may attract birds.
Visit BirdCast.info for the latest migration information.
Why go Lights Out?
Most birds migrate at night, employing an incredible sensory system to navigate and to orient in darkness. Light pollution attracts and disorients these migrating birds, disrupting these systems and increasing birds' vulnerability to collisions with structures. An estimated 365 – 988 million birds die in collisions with buildings annually, including a number of species of high conservation concern. You can help dramatically reduce the hazards from light pollution for nocturnally migrating birds by turning off all non-essential lighting.
To see when birds are migrating over your area anywhere in the continental US, follow our Migration Dashboard here: https://dashboard.birdcast.info.
For more information about BirdCast and the Lights Out program, visit: https://birdcast.info/science-to-action/lights-out.
For Lights Out alerts in additional cities, states, and regions in the continental US, please visit Dr. Kyle Horton's CSU Aeroeco Lab U.S. Lights Out page.
Every spring and fall, billions of birds migrate through the US, mostly under the cover of darkness. This mass movement of birds must contend with a dramatically increasing but still largely unrecognized threat: light pollution.