Bright Lights, Big City

Bird apologists have convinced some building owners — including the Chrysler Building! — to turn off their lights late at night so as not to lure wayward birds into a tragic, sudden and rather gruesome death:

City officials and NYC Audubon want all lights decorating the outside of buildings above the 40th floor to be turned off by midnight from now until the end of October.

The initiative, called Lights Out New York, is to be announced today and is designed to help hundreds of thousands of migrating birds navigate safely through the Big Apple on their annual route south.

Every year, 10,000 birds, among them red-tailed hawks, kestrels and white-throated sparrows, flap their way through the city after dark, get thrown off by the high-perched lights and crash into the skyscrapers — most often fatally.

“We find hundreds of birds every year injured or dead in the city,” said NYC Audubon Executive Director E.J. McAdams.

“We’re not asking building owners to turn out the lights all year round,” he said, pointing out that the migrating season is only a few months long in the spring and fall.

. . .

The Empire State Building — which experienced a lot of problems with birds in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s — already turns off its famed lights by midnight, McAdams noted.

The 77-story Chrysler Building now keeps its decorative lights shining until sunrise — but it will soon join the Lights Out program, a source said.

See also: New York City Audubon Society’s Project Safe Flight: Compassion in Action program (“Windows kill millions of birds each year . . . and New York has a lot of windows”).