Transcript

9.18.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated September October
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twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a
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reading service intended for people who are blind or have
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other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the first article titled The
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New Science of aero Ecology reveals so much about the
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amazing creatures that populate the skies and how humans can
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ensure their survival. The sky above us is a complex ecosystem,
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just like the land and sea. A new field of
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research is bringing a fresh understanding of the birds, bugs,
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and other species that live there. By Jim Robbins. Each
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year on September eleventh, visitors gather at the National September
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eleventh Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan to watch an
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art NAE installation called Tribute in Light. Two Ramrod straight
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beams pierced the night sky, representing the fallen Twin Towers
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and all the people who perished from the attack. Each
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beam is made using forty four blazing seven thousand watt
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xenon spotlights on a clear night. People in the New
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York area concede the display within a sixty mile radius.
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Its beautiful, soul stirring poignant. The light show is also
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mesmerizing to passing birds. Early September is the peak of
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fall migration along the Atlantic Coast, and birds from the
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northern United States and Canada, from warblers to sparrows to nighthawks,
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are streaming south through the skies above Manhattan. Once the
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tribute switches on, something comes over them. Researchers using weather
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radar and other types of remote sensing found in twenty
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fifteen that the number of birds in the vicinity increased
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from five hundred to nearly sixteen thousand. As the birds
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enter the columns of light, each beam measuring forty eight
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feet by forty eight feet, they become so mesmerized that
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they forget themselves and their journey. They circle zombie like
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inside the beams in growing numbers, calling out loudly, and
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their circling grows lower in altitude. If they fly too
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low in this disoriented state, they risk crashing into buildings
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or onto the pavement. Last year, on September eleventh, I
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joined a group of binocular bedecked staff and volunteers from
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the New York City Bird Alliance atop the Battery Parking Garage,
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the staging ground for the light show for the group's
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annual all night vigil. Some of the volunteers had personal
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connections to nine to eleven. They'd lost loved ones or
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a limb, or otherwise suffered trauma that day. Looking out
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for the birds is part of their healing. The light
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show's producers and their equipment were stationed beside us on
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the roof of the garage. Around ten thirty, as the
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birds appeared to descend into the danger zone, the aptly
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named dust and Partridge, director of Conservation and Science for
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the Alliance, asked the production company to switch off the
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installation immediately. The sky went dark and the loud call
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of confused birds ceased. After fifteen or twenty minutes, the
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lights went back on. Insects get no such consideration. From
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our perch on the garage, we could see them wander
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into the source of the light beams and disappear with
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a loud zap and a puff of smoke. Partridge signaled
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three switch offs before midnight, and after that the birds
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stayed out of the beams until daybreak. If we weren't there,
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the situation would be very different, he told me. After
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the all nighter, we would quite literally have thousands of
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birds becoming exhausted and falling from the sky or colliding
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with buildings nearby. The vigil that night was a practical
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application of a young field called arrow ecology. For a
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long time, scientists who studied flying creatures focused on their
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earth bound activities nesting, foraging, and mating. Because of a
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lack of technology, their time in the sky was largely
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left out. In the nineteen forties, George Lowry, an eminent
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ornithologist and zoologist at Louisiana State University, organized volunteers to
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document night time migrations of birds as their silhouettes crossed
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the face of the moon. But as recently as two
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thousand eight, such studies were still rare enough that Thomas Kuntz,
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a bat biologist at Boston University, wrote an influential paper
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titled arrow Ecology, Probing and Modeling the Aerosphere. He urged
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fellow scientists to regard the space above the ground not
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as a transitional void between point A and point B,
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but as a complex ecosystem in its own right. Rob
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del a US Geological survey researcher in Bozeman, Montana, expanded
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on the idea in a twenty thirteen paper called the
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air space is habitat. It's out of earshot, it's out
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of eye shot, but it's filled with life. Dial told
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me it's amazing. Some like in the ground where we live,
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to the bottom of the ocean, untold numbers of creatures
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swirl above us, their movements and intentions largely unknown. Countless
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flying insects pollinate plants and provide food for an incredibly
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wide variety of other creatures. What role does the aerosphere
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play in their movements, their hunting, their reproduction, even their evolution.
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With new advances such as g p S trackers, thermal imaging,
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and powerful radar, the study of the aerosphere has now
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developed into a full fledged scientific field. Some eleven thousand
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species of birds and fourteen hundred species of bats spend
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part of their lives in the air. Common swifts, for example,
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spend up to ten months at a time on the wing.
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Albatrosses can likewise go months without landing on solid ground.
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The bar tailed godwit has the longest non stop migration
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in the world, leaving southern Alaska and flying for more
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than a week night and day to New Zealand. The
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bar headed goose migrates over the Himalayas, with reported sightings
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over Mount Everest more than five miles above sea level.
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The atmospheres also filled with populations of microbes so abundant
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they boggle the mind. Every day, eight hundred million viruses
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fall from the sky on every square meter of the Earth.
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If some cause disease, others contain DNA that could be
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essential to life on Earth. Early humans benefited from a
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snippet of viral DNA that now plays a role in
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our nerve communication and higher order thinking. Researchers recently published
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a study that sampled microbes attached to dust circling in
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the atmosphere and identified two hundred and sixty six types
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of fungi and three hundred five types of bacteria. Even
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the dust, while not alive, plays a role in living systems.
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Significant amounts of phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and potassium travel on
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the jet stream from the Gobi Desert to the forests
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of California, where they fuel a nutrient poor environment, nourishing
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trees that include the giant sequoias. The study of the
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sky is breathtakingly interdisciplinary. Deal said it includes fundamental forces
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such as wind, atmospheric pressure, temperature, sunlight and moonlight, and gravity.
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A recent study found that geomagnetic storms, which give us
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the northern and southern lights, appear to disrupt the magnetic
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sense that birds use for navigation, causing fewer to fly.
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Those that did fly during the auroras had a more
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difficult time finding their way. Another recent study found that
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solar eclipses suppressed bird's activity, though not as profoundly as
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the sun setting at night. Nothing has changed life in
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the air as dramatically as people. In the last century
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or so, the Earth's lower atmosphere has gone from virtually
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empty of human intrusion to extremely cluttered in many places.
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The sprawl of brightly lit cities, the clusters of glass buildings,
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the growing clouds of air pollution, the proliferating aircraft, the
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emergence of drones, the rise of cell towers, and the
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development of wind turbines and solar panels have all affected
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flying creatures. The warming climate is also increasing turbulence, raising
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their heat stress and reducing their ability to lift up.
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Because warmer air is less dense and presents less resistance
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to flapping wings. A twenty nineteen study found that since
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nineteen seventy, birds in the US and Canada have declined
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by three billion nearly a third. Ninety percent of that
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decline was concentrated in twelve families of common birds, the
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ones we see every day. Writing for The New York Times,
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John Fitzpatrick, former director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
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and Peter P. Mara, former director of the Smithsonian Migratory
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Bird Center, called this a staggering loss that suggests the
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very fabric of North America's ecosystem is unraveling. After domestic cats,
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which kill more than one billion birds across America each year,
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the second leading human related cause of death in the
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U S is collisions with the built environment, which kill
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up to a billion annually. Thirty birds in the US
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die every second. The plains of eastern Wyoming are among
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the windiest places in the continental U S. Near the
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tiny town of Rolling Hills, with antelope and deer wandering
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freely through its quiet streets, hundreds of wind turbines have
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been erected atop the hills. Wind is one of the cleanest,
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most cost effective forms of renewable energy an integral part
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of the effort to break free from fossil fuels and
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slow a warming climate. Yet many birds and bats are
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killed when they collide with turbine blades. While the full
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impact is not yet known, its considerable. Next Era Energy,
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which generates more wind and solar energy than any other
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company in the world, owns a subsidiary that had to
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pay eight million dollars in fines in twenty twenty two
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for killing at least one hundred and fifty eagles in
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Wyoming and New Mexico. A company owned by Pacific Corps,
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a grid operator in the western US that draws about
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a fifth of its energy from wind power, also paid
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millions in fines and restitution for killing at least thirty
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eight golden eagles and three hundred thirty six other protected birds,
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including hawks. The six thousand or so wind turbines at
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Altamont Pass in California are especially deadly. Hundreds of burrowing owls,
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red tailed hawks, and kestrels are killed every year, along
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with dozens of eagles. Some experts think the number of
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birds felled is higher than we know. These companies are
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now working with arrow ecologists to find solutions when I
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visited the Glen Rock Rolling Hills Wind Facility, which is
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owned by Pacific Corp. Deal was on the ground. He
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believes there are a wide variety of invisible yet critical
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habitat niches in the aerosphere. One of his studies showed
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that birds surf wind formations to migrate with less effort.
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Eagles and turbines are after the same thing, Dial said,
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and they are doing it in the same airspace. Counting
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mortalities is an important step. We watched as a border
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Collie named Scotty ran across the dry grass on a
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long leash, sniffing the ground. His handler, Heather Nootbar, is
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the co founder of a nonprofit called Canine Conservationists, and
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she and Scottie had been contracted to locate and count
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birds and bats killed by turbine blades. Above us was
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a towering, slowly spinning wind turbine that cast a moving
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shadow on the ground. The deaths of golden eagles draw
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the most concern. These majestic creatures have a wingspan that
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can exceed seven feet and possess keen eyesight as much
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as eight times more powerful than our own. The ferocious
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winds over these treeless planes make this some of the
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best eagle habitat in the country. As the birds soar
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overhead and scour the ground for prey, they can spot
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a scurrying rabbit up to three miles away. There are
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only around forty thousand golden eagles in the US. They
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are not endangered, but their populations are shrinking in some places.
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A number of factors are to blame, from starvation in
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the nest to illegal shooting and lead poisoning from ingesting
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game riddled with hunter's bullets. Collisions with wind turbines are
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high on the list. If you increase any one of
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those causes, said Todd Katzner, a US Geological Survey biologist
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who studies soaring birds, it could be the thing that
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pushes the population into further decline. Birds don't just fly
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through the wind. They use it in complex ways. For example,
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they harness something called horizontal roll ortices, upward moving convection
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currents that enable them to soar with little effort, even
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into headwinds. By expending less energy in flight, they have
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more to devote to hunting and breeding, which translates into
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higher survival rates. Researchers haven't pinned down a single cause
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that makes birds collide with wind turbines, which spin at
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roughly one hundred and fifty miles per hour. But one
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experimental approach uses artificial intelligence to identify nearby eagles. Systems
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like identiflight suggest they can spot an eagle more than
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half a mile away and shut off a turbine's motion
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to prevent a collision in about thirty seconds. The technology
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works well in some places, but there are drawbacks. The
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units are expensive, and in places with a lot of eagles,
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the cost of frequently shutting off the turbines may make
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the proach untenable. Deal fifty five remembers being drawn into
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the world of birds at age nine. My dad showed
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me a scarlet tanager. He said it was different than
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seeing a robin and a blue jay. I realized there
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was diversity out there, and so I started watching birds religiously.
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At the University of Illinois, he tagged birds with radio
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transmitters and followed them from below. In those days, biologists
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used antennas that needed to be within several miles. You
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follow it as best you can wherever it Goestel said.
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In more than one case, he and a colleague drove
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all night on rural roads in the dark across state lines,
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tracking a migrating thrush. While we watched the dog at work,
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Deal told me about a small study in Norway in
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which one blade out of three on turbines was painted black.
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Collisions declined by seventy two percent. There are now studies
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of painted blades under way in South Africa, Italy and
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elsewhere to see if the approach works in more geographical
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settings with other bird species. As the field of arrow
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ecology progresses, Deal believes it could lead to arrow protected areas,
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akin to the role of marine protected areas in the ocean.
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These will be places in the sky that are particularly
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critical not only to large numbers of birds and bats,
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but also to insects. For example, Deal and a team
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from Montana State University have been monitoring a radar station
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about two hundred and forty miles away near Cody, Wyoming,
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which he set up to study army cutworm moths, large
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which brown insects with white spots on their wings, also
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known as miller moths. The larvae of those moths feed
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on canola, wheat, and alfalfa. Their survival is vital to species.
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Many miles away. After they metamorphose, they journey by the
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millions across the grasslands and into the rocky mountains, where
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they sip nectar from the riot of wild flowers that
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bloom in the alpine meadows. Prowling, grizzly and black bears
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turn over rocks to feast voraciously on the swarms of
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moths known as bear butter because they have such a
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high fat content. One bear can eat up to forty
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thousand moths each day. Diel's colleague Jason Chapman, a researcher
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at nanjingg Agricultural University in China, focuses full time on
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the arrow ecology of insects, using radar and floating nets
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tethered to balloons. Skyborn insects are are to study because
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they are generally too small to wear a transmitter. What
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is known is that many migrating insects take advantage of
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the wind to cover long distances, and researchers are still
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stumped about how that plays out. Several species of moths
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in the noctuid family follow this pattern. They only migrate
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on nights when the high altitude winds are beneficial and
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will take them in the correct seasonal direction, Chapman told me.
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And then they fly up high five hundred or six
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hundred meters or maybe even a kilometer and get into
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these very fast moving, favorably directed air streams, at which
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point they can travel really fast all over. How they
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know when the winds are favorable and where they are
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going are just a couple of the mysteries researchers are
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trying to solve. Because insect migrations are multi generational, how
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they pass information about the turn trip to their offspring
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is still largely unknown. You are trying to study something
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that's inherently difficult. Deal said of arrow ecology. The migrations
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might be taking place more than two miles up in
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the air, over water, or at night. It's very difficult
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to figure out what's going on. That's why the field
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relies heavily on remote sensing, from thermal imaging to bioacoustics,
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even tracking from a space station, as well as valuable
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radar systems. It can track the mass movement of migrating
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birds across very large scales. It can also track birds
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migrating across the continent at night, which is when most
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birds travel to avoid predators and take advantage of cooler
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temperatures and less wind. In North America, seventy percent of
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terrestrial birds migrate, and eighty percent of those migrate at night.
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A system of one hundred and fifty nine weather radar
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stations known as NEXAD or Next Generation Radar, has proved
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helpful for tracking migration. These stations are so sensitive experts
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say that they can detect a single bumblebee thirty miles away.
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A major drawback, though, is that the system can't distinguish
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between species, just identify flying creatures and their collective mass.
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Data from radars is sometimes combined with the sounds of
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bird calls gathered by microphone arrays on top of buildings.
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This combined information can generate an incredibly detailed forecast of
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bird migration. A project called bird Cast, which is operated
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by Cornell, Colorado State University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst,
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and the University of Illinois Urbana Champaigne, offers data to
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the public and a digestible form at the birdcast web site.
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During migration periods, simply type in the name of your
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county or state and you'll be able to find the
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number and species of birds passing through bird cast is
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also a valuable research tool. The data shows, for example,
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that birds are becoming trapped in the world's expanding lightscapes,
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circling endlessly until they fall to the ground, exhausted, or
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crash into windows and walls. This seems to be happening everywhere,
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all the time, said the University of Delawares Jeff Bueller,
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a leading aero ecologist. The insight led to an international
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campaign urging people to turn off unneeded lights in specific
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corridors during spring and fall migrations. The data helps reveal
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how migration routes and times are shifting in response to
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climate change. Bird physiology also comes into play. Researchers have
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identified a molecule in bird's eyes called cryptochrome, which seems
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to react to the planet's magnetic field through quantum entanglement,
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allowing birds to see and follow it. Andrew Farnsworth, a
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migration ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, hypothesizes that
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birds suffer from light pollution because wavelengths of light activate
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that molecule in ways that are not expected, and therein
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lies the disorientation. It swamps the signal that birds are
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expecting and with which they evolved. Experts are also studying
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how birds fly. Even though Leonardo da Vinci made groundbreaking
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observations about bird flight back in the fifteenth century, there
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are still many mysteries about how they do the things
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they do in the aerosphere. At the University of Montana,
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Flight Lab director Brett Tubalski and his PhD student Reme
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del Planche have been filming Eurasian collared doves that are
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pulled off course as they fly in a wind tunnel.
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Each birds placed in a wind tunnel with measurement tools
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strapped to its back as it beats against the wind.
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Flying in place, computer controlled gusts nudge the bird off course.
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High speed cameras placed above the bird records its destabilization
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and nearly instantaneous recovery from the artificial perturbation. Understanding this
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mechanism could offer clues about what lies ahead for birds
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as the planet warms and turbulence increases. At the Smithsonian,
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the Feather Identification Lab at the National Museum of Natural
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History has spent years analyzing remains from bird strikes to
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better understand which species intersect with specific types of aircraft.
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The lab's manager, Karla Dove says her team will have
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an even greater role to play with the expansion of
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drone delivery systems. These devices work and the bird air
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scarce more than traditional air vehicles. She says. I think
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as long as birds and humans fly together, we will
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have bird strikes. But with a little effort and data,
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we can reduce those risks and help save the birds too.
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Some solutions have already been found and implemented in New
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York City. The Javits Center, a convention center in midtown
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Manhattan that takes up four blocks along the Hudson River,
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has been called Darth Vader because so many birds flew
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headlong into its sprawling walls of glass, but the building
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is now considered one of the most bird friendly in
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New York. In twenty thirteen, enormous expanses of conventional glass
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were replaced with windows that have a pattern of tiny
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squares barely perceptible to humans but noticeable to birds. In
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twenty fourteen, the acres of traditional roof were transformed into
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one of the largest green roofs in the city. It
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hosts a scedum meadow, an easy to maintain cluster of
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succulents that has become the largest herring Gull Rookery in
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New York City. A one acre vegetable garden and ten
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thousand square foot orchard also on the rooftop provide harvests
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that feed convention goers. The NYC Bird Alliance just recorded
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its seventy third species on the rooftop. New York City
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has also moved to rain in its glow. The city's
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government buildings are now required to have their lights turned
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off at night during migration periods. Partridge of the Bird
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Alliance told me about a morning visit recently to the
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garden atop the Javits Center amid the city's concrete canyons.
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I was having the greatest moment sitting in this habitat
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on top of a roof in Manhattan and having multiple
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warbler species singing all around me. He said to me,
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that is the future of cities. Green spaces built with
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bird safe glass, and cities darkened at night for migration.
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It's a whin, he said, not only for birds, but
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for people too. Next ask Smithsonian, you've got questions. We've
26:14
got experts from Frank Oranter Rochester, New York. Where did
26:19
the Big Bang take place? The answer is from Peter
26:23
Edmond's astrophysicist Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The term Big Bang might
26:31
bring to mind an explosion from a central point expanding
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outward in all directions. In fact, scientists think that the
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Big Bang did not happen at a single location in space.
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It occurred everywhere at once. This is a challenging concept
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to grasp, but Arthur Eddington offered an analogy in his
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nineteen thirty three book The Expanding Universe. Imagine all the
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galaxies in the universe as points on the surface of
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an empty balloon. As the balloon expands, the galaxies all
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move away from one another, but there is no single
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point on the surface that the galaxies are expanding away from.
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Note that this analogy considers only the two dimensional surface
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of the balloon, so the actual center of the balloon
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isn't part of the imagined universe. This may help explain
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how the universe can have no center and yet be
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expanding equally in all directions. Finally, a letter to the
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editor from David Weinstock, Fairfax, California, peanuts creator Charles Schultz
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Life in a Nutshell July August twenty twenty five had
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the courage cartoonists drawing animals didn't need. His introduction of Franklin,
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a black character added after Martin Luther King Junior's assassination,
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may have cost him a few readers, but it helped
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heal a century's old fracture that still needs work. Schultz
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was heroic as well as empathetic. This concludes readings from
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the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.
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Thank you for listening, and have a great day.