ECO SPEAKS CLE
ECO SPEAKS CLE is where the eco-curious explore Northeast Ohio's unique and thriving environmental community. Each episode delivers thoughtful and informative interviews with local sustainability leaders and offers tips to help listeners connect, learn, and live with the community and planet in mind. ECO SPEAKS CLE is hosted by Diane Bickett and produced by her son-in-law, Greg Rotuno. Diane draws on experiences and relationships developed during her 31-year environmental career to showcase the impactful work shaping Cleveland's environmental future in a podcast that speaks to sustainability newcomers and masters alike.
ECO SPEAKS CLE
Saving the Birds with Lights Out Cleveland and LENSC
What if there was a way to save thousands of innocent birds from lethal collisions with our urban glass structures each year? In this episode of EcoSpeak CLE, we head to Lake Erie Nature and Science Center to speak with wildlife rehabilitation specialist Tim Jasinski, one of the founders of Lights Out Cleveland. Tim shares the challenges migratory birds face in navigating the dangerous cityscape of Cleveland and how we all help make our community more feather-friendly.
Tim takes us behind the scenes of Lights Out Cleveland and The Lake Erie Nature and Science Center, revealing the dedication and commitment of the volunteers who roam downtown streets in the early morning hours during spring and fall migrations to rescue and rehabilitate injured birds. In our Tip Time, Tim shares what to do if you find an injured bird or animal and some of his favorite spots around town to bird watch.
Lights Out Cleveland needs more volunteers. You can make a difference by becoming a Bird Collision Monitoring Crew member. Monitoring and collection volunteers are responsible for monitoring specific areas throughout Downtown Cleveland, collecting/transporting both living and dead birds, and recording data. Monitoring happens between 5:00 am – 8:30 am, March 15 – ~June 1 and August 15 – mid-November. Opportunities are available seven days per week. To become a volunteer, you will need to join the Cleveland Metroparks volunteer system.
Guest:
Tim Jasinski, Wildlife Rehabilitation Specialist with Lake Erie Nature and Science Center and Founder of Lights Out Cleveland
Resources:
Lights out Cleveland
Lake Erie Nature and Science Center
Become a Lights Out Cleveland volunteer
Feather Friendly window film
Ohio Bird Conservation Initiative
Make your house more bird-friendly.
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Contact us:
hello@ecospeakscle.com
You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the EcoCurious explore the unique and thriving environmental community here in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Bicke and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together, we bring you inspiring stories from local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn and live with our community and planet in mind. Hello friends, thanks for joining us. We are going to start today's podcast with a quick announcement, a reminder for you to sign up for our next EcoMeat CLE event, which is going to be on Tuesday, October 17th at Great Lakes Brewing Company. Door is open at five o'clock and we are featuring a local food panel of speakers with some farmers, and we'll be talking about local food policy and our local food system. And, of course, we will have local food so please join us and beer. So please join us. Tickets are $15 on Eventbrite.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it is late September and we are in the heart of the fall bird migration season. Millions of birds, especially songbirds, are migrating through Ohio on their way south. This migration usually takes place at night. Birds can fly hundreds of miles in one night and thousands of miles to their destinations, but they face a huge threat along the way, and that threat is the brightly lit buildings in downtown Cleveland with their reflective glass, which is very disorienting to the birds and causes them to smash into the glass or circle the buildings until they fall from exhaustion. And it's not a small number of birds that are hurt or killed flying into buildings. Just ask any of the volunteers from Lights Out Cleveland who have been roaming the downtown streets in the early morning hours during migration season to rescue injured birds and collect dead ones since 2017. And we have one of those volunteers with us today, Speaking with us about the perils faced by migratory birds and the work being done to help them is Tim Chisinski, the founder of Lights Out Cleveland and a wildlife rehabilitation specialist with the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center in Bay Village, which is Cuyahoga County's only wildlife rehabilitation center.
Speaker 1:Welcome, Tim.
Speaker 2:Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us. I read that you once said that downtown Cleveland is more lethal to avian species in any other city in Ohio.
Speaker 2:It's true.
Speaker 1:And why?
Speaker 2:So there's many reasons why, but one of the main reasons is that Cleveland is right on the lake, right on the shores of Lake Erie, and the birds are. It's a big barrier for birds when they're crossing over, doing their migration, and so either they they're tired from flying over the lake and they get right to downtown and it's a large city and it's it can be very brightly lit. So just being on the lake front is is one of the main problems.
Speaker 1:And they're attracted to the light.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're attracted to. We don't really know why, but this birds and insects are attracted to light and it's just the white lights specifically, and they are just, they fly towards it, and so that can cause issues when there's a lot of glass behind that light.
Speaker 1:And so what's happening?
Speaker 2:So typically these birds are migrating at night and they're they're coming to the city and if the city is lit up they just are drawn to that, versus going, versus to continue their migration. So they get down into the city and they're circling and circling, just trying to figure out what to do, because normally they probably didn't encounter cities before, and so they're just circling trying to figure out what to do because they never, may never, have seen glass or buildings or anything before. Because a lot of these birds are migrating from the boreal forests of Canada for the first time, specifically in fall. They hatch this year up up there and they're heading down and they're just they're, they're lost and they're confused, and you know then they're, they're in trouble, they're trapped in the cityscape and and they're running into the glass because this reflective it is.
Speaker 2:We often get people here call and right here comments that birds are stupid because they hit glass. People run into glass too. So if you ever see construction sites, they have like tape over the glass so people don't run into it. It's just a thing that they didn't evolve with. You know, they don't understand the concept of glass. They see glass as either a continuous habitat, so they see trees, trees and then more trees. But we see trees, trees, glass trees because of the reflection. So they are just following those trees and they go from one tree to another and they don't understand that there's glass there, so they hit it and then they're injured or dead immediately. It's unfortunate.
Speaker 1:Well, I first heard of lights out Cleveland several years ago from a friend, shirley Tomicello, who's active in your organization. She's with the Cleveland law department and also a bird lover, and she told me about this organization where volunteers are kind of combing the streets of Cleveland in the early morning hours, like between five and eight AM, and they're you're picking up dead birds and injured birds, and by the dozens and by the hundreds.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean on average for a full year. Lights out. Cleveland volunteers collect around 3,000 songbirds down there Get out. Yeah, about two thirds are found dead, unfortunately, but it's a lot.
Speaker 1:It is a lot. So you're collecting the injured birds and bringing them all here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so all the live birds and dead birds actually are brought here to the center so we can process them. The live birds get medications and obviously we can go into that in a little bit. The dead ones go into the freezer with the hopes that they'll go to a museum or somewhere where they can be used as for science, for, you know, for the future, so they're not thrown away or eaten by gulls downtown. They're actually can be used and repurposed for to study them.
Speaker 1:Wow. So what kind of birds are migrating? Right now it's late September.
Speaker 2:So we're getting mostly warblers right now. The early migrant warblers like Bay Brezza warblers, black Pole warblers, tennessee, commonwealth, throat, nashville, red Stards, black Threaded Blues and the trickling of sparrows are starting to come through. So we're getting our first Lincoln sparrows now. A few white threaded sparrows are coming through. We haven't had the influx yet. That's usually end of October for those guys, but we're getting mostly warblers right now and some. Our first yellow-bellied sap sucker the other day, rosebesser Grospeaks. So there's birds we kind of call super colliders and those are birds that are always found in any collision program. Just there's a lot of them and it's just something about those birds are more prone to collisions.
Speaker 1:Wow, do you know, have an estimate, how many birds you have at the Wildlife Center now?
Speaker 2:I don't have an exact amount. We released a bunch today but I mean every day can be different, but on average for fall we admit anywhere from like five to 150 live birds a day, depending on weather and other factors involved, how many people we have down there. But fall is busy because there's a couple reasons. One is that all the young birds are coming down for their first flight, so there's more birds than there would be in the spring. And then also the migration patterns are different in the fall. So Black Pole Warbler might go up through the South America, through Mexico and up towards the breeding forest, the border forest in Canada and Alaska, in the spring, but in the fall they're going to take a Southeast migration to the coast, coming through Ohio. So we get very few Black Pole Warblers in the spring but a lot of them in the fall.
Speaker 1:Walk us through what happens with how many you know lights out, cleveland, your volunteers what happens? Do you meet up on 9th and Carnegie or something at five in the morning? Tell us about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it really depends.
Speaker 2:But typically we have a meeting location, we have leads for the morning, so we have volunteers that are seasons doing this, so they're our lead for the morning, so they kind of organize the collection for the morning.
Speaker 2:So they'll text the team and say, hey, we're meeting here at this time and they'll all get together, get all the supplies that they need and then they head out and start monitoring the certain routes downtown looking for injured or stunned or dead birds and we go, typically lights out, cleveland starts March 15th through the beginning of June and we start August 15th and we go through mid-November and so we go every single day, unless there's like severe weather that prevents us from going down there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we're collecting every single day and we need more volunteers. So that's a good thing we're doing this. But the goal is to have at least eight people a day 12 people a day really, ideally where you can do all the different routes and have enough people to collect the amount of birds, because sometimes birds will be found on one route and they're not found on the other route and we don't really know why that happens. But one route could have a ton of birds and others are just vacant of birds. So the more people we have down there, the more coverage the better we have of collecting all the birds that are affected.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine it's easy to get enough volunteers to help you One. It's very heartbreaking work, I imagine. Yes, the hours are kind of rough.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Seven days a week, it is. So in 2017, when we started this, I went down every day and then came to work every day, so it's a volunteer thing. Then I came to work every day, so I'm really tiring 12 more days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically, but yeah, so it's a lot of work, it is early mornings, but you're saving birds that need help, so if you weren't down there doing it, they would be either they would be dead from flying into another window, because even if they do fly away, there's other glass everywhere down there. The cleanup crews sweep them up live or dead, put them in a trash, and then gulls get them. So gulls are a very smart and intelligent bird. We have in the lake that they learned to monitor these buildings themselves for birds that are collision victims. So they'll actually fly down past Rocket Mortgage, fieldhouse or another larger building and just scoop up all the birds that may have hit that morning and eat them all up at one time Wow, so yeah, Is there training involved for your volunteers?
Speaker 1:There is how to pick up an injured bird so you don't injure it more there is.
Speaker 2:So all the volunteer aspect of Lights Out Cleveland is now run by Cleveland Metroparks, so they have an awesome volunteer system there and there is a training videos you have to watch and there's a little quiz at the end. But basically, if you want to become a Lights Out Cleveland volunteer, go to Cleveland Metroparks website and look under Volunteer Opportunities and there should be a little job in quotes post for Lights Out Cleveland and you fill that out and then you can get put on the schedule and you can pick the days you want to go down, and so it's really easy. It's a super easy process and it is. The drawbacks of Lights Out Cleveland are there are a lot of dead birds and bats that we find down there and it's a lot of walking and early morning. But it is rewarding that you can not only save birds that are alive, that you can rescue, but also all the birds that are picked up that are dead are still going to be used for scientific collection and not thrown away or eaten by gulls, so you're still helping.
Speaker 1:And you get your 20,000 steps in for the day. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on average, most of the volunteers, at least when I was actively doing it. Often it's about 10 miles minimum a day you're doing down there.
Speaker 1:Wow, tell us about how Lights Out Cleveland was started.
Speaker 2:So there was a woman named Sue Roman and she worked at one of the buildings in downtown Cleveland, the 200 public square, the Hunton Building. She worked as a security guard and she would actually bring in a ton of birds every spring and fall that she collected down there while she was working. She would pick up these birds and sneak them into a box and hide them in her locker and then bring them to us at the end of the day after her shift, and she was really passionate about this. So I really deem her the one that started Lights Out Cleveland thought process, and so she'd bring the birds here and then we rebuilt the live ones and released them, and then the dead ones would go to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where Chief Wildlife Officer Harvey Webster was working then, and he says this is a problem, we need to get this going, we need to get this, we need to do something in Cleveland, and so he tried to organize a see, if I can say it, were there other Lights Out organizations in existence at the time.
Speaker 2:Lights Out Columbus, I think, was first, yeah, and so we kind of wanted to piggyback on basically, chicago's Lights Out, cleveland Lights Out, lights Out program, and so we wanted to do what they were doing in Chicago in Cleveland. And so Harvey tried to get this going. He wanted to call it smart, light, safe flight and that's hard to say and he was trying to get things going by extrapolating data from other cities to show, hey, it's a problem here. But then they would get questions from building owners, well, how do you have data to show that? And they would go, oh no, not really. And back then we just rushed about city. We just got the lights on. Why are we trying to turn them back off? Kind of thing. So it just didn't really work. And so that was in the early 2000s, 2006, 2004, or somewhere around there, when Sue Roman was collecting these birds.
Speaker 2:And so then in 2016, at Ohio Wild Life Rehabilitation Association conference, matt Schumar from Ohio Bird Conservation Initiative did a talk about Lights Out and what to do, and I ran up to him after the conference. I'm like yo, we need to get this going in Cleveland. He's like whoa, who's this crazy guy Like? I'm like really obviously energetic and I talk really fast. And so he's like OK, we'll figure something out. And so then, because that spring we had 18 American woodcock brought in from downtown, just from the general public, because here at the center we don't have resources to pick up animals so the public brought in 18 woodcock alone in that spring and I'm just like this is stupid, we need to get this, we need to do something. This is preventable, let's do something.
Speaker 2:So then I harassed Matt that fall and then in that early spring of 2017, like usually January February I got together with Harvey and Dr Annie Jones, former curator of ornithology at the Klee Museum of Natural History, and a couple of the collaborators and said how are we going to do this? And I said let's do this. So I got a bunch of bird, her friends and Cleveland zookeepers to help start a monitoring program to figure out where these birds are and where they're hitting and how we can help with the data that Sue Roman gave us, where she would say. I said where are these birds hitting? So she's like oh, I don't know. She's going crazier than I am. So I'm like hold on.
Speaker 2:So let me write this down. So we wrote it down on where she would find all these birds. And then Andy Jones and I mapped it out kind of on where we should start looking for these birds and that's where it started. So everyone gives me credit for starting, even though I technically did, you know, with the monitoring program. But Harvey Webster is really the dream. I'm like getting this going, so I always give him credit. He was gives me credit, so it's both of us that.
Speaker 1:The other aspect of lights out Cleveland is to get the building owner owners to turn off their lights from midnight to what dawn.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:How? How's that going?
Speaker 2:So that's not my part of the job. My job is to take care of the birds and we have collaborator collaborators like Matt Schumar with Oha bird conservation initiative. Harvey Webster is the retired chief wildlife officer for Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and a couple other people like you mentioned Shirley Thomas oh, she's awesome and so there's a bunch of different people that are in collaboration to Talk to build building owners and managers on what we're recommending, so they do all the big work there. I don't do that part of it, so we leave it to the experts for that.
Speaker 1:So what do you recommend then for building owners, especially downtown buildings, high-rises we're talking mainly right really any.
Speaker 2:Honestly, it's any building that has glass, okay, that can be. That's either reflective or a large pane of glass, specifically near Habitat. So bushes, trees, grass, things like that, where where the birds are feeding, so they're more likely to hit on windows adjacent to Habitat because that's where they're hanging out. So I see any any building that wants to, even if they don't have any, you know, windows if they want to reduce lighting. Just you could reach out to lights out Cleveland through a how bird conservation initiative website. It's a hot lights out org. You could just go to that website and an email Matt Schumar and he can get in touch with you and, you know, give you recommendations or whatever on what we can, what you can do to help in your own building.
Speaker 1:So we encourage managers of buildings and, you know, owners to reach out to us to see how they can help in the springtime there's a blue jay that always you know nests and this one tree I have front Always smashes into my window and I've tried everything to kind of reduce the Reflectivity of the glass, like shutting the blinds and putting strings up, and but is there another way to To kind of make the glass not reflective? So that's a good question that could work in my house but also like big commercial buildings sure?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the, there's two. There's another reason I forgot to mention why birds hit glass. And it's there. They're attacking the reflection. So the jay you just mentioned is angry at the jay that's in his territory. So he's not actually hit in the window because he's dumb or he's, so he doesn't understand that it's, you know, doesn't understand the concept glass. He's actually seeing his own reflection and trying to chase that bird away from his territory and they don't leave because it's its reflection. So he's, he's just all day.
Speaker 2:This happens typically with with Robbins Cardinals, american Goldfinches, scarlet Tangers, any brightly, brightly colored birds. This happens. We get a lot of spring calls, especially starts and usually March or April, like people call and they say I got this bird doing the weirdest thing. I'm like can I guess what it is? And they're like, yeah, I'm like is he attacking your window? She's like yeah, how did you know? And it's just, that's a seasonal thing and so they just they're attacking their reflection.
Speaker 2:So basically to answer a question, breaking up the reflection is the best way to do it. It doesn't always work with those kind of birds because they're just, they still get, still gonna see their reflection. But what we recommend with your own house or large buildings downtown is using any bird collision film that you can get. There's two main companies that sell it is Kaleid escape and feather friendly. They're both great companies. We work very closely with Paul from feather friendly here. We're actually gonna be treating our building here eventually with with with feather friendly, because it's you know, we do have collisions here. Any basically any building or structure has glass is gonna have collisions. Most of the collisions that happen in North America are from residential houses, so the the building high rises downtown do certainly pose a problem, but it's majority more jordily. That's not even a real word. Most of the collisions happen at residential houses. So anything you can do at your own house, you can go to feather friendly org and research residential Window treatment.
Speaker 2:So basically there's there's different ways you can do it and different things, but there's basically fretted dots that go on the outside of the window that break up the reflection. So it's recommended that every two by two inches of the window is covered. Long-term study used to been to every two by four inches, but then we realized hummingbird was still getting through that. So it's recommend now that every two by two inches are covering the window and that breaks of a reflection and it's proven to be really, really successful. And it's it's, it's, it's highly recommended to reach out to either collat, escape or feather friendly to treat your windows at home.
Speaker 2:And we often hear here people will call and say I had a bird hit my window. It's and this is the first time it's like, not the first time you've noticed you've had to glass up, there's birds hitting that window and so just because you didn't notice doesn't mean there's others happening. So it's easy, you just, you just. It comes in little, either little strips or large pieces of Plastic that you basically put on the window, and then you remove the layer of the sticky part and just a little dacha left on the window, and so it's really effective. I.
Speaker 1:Are there some buildings in downtown Cleveland that are worse than others, when it comes to just there?
Speaker 2:there certainly can be and you know we definitely don't want to building shame any buildings that are down there because now we can't do it. It's not how, but basically any building has large amounts of glass that's reflective and has habitat, is is, you know, is going to be problematic, so but even just small little windows can be. So you know, generally we we monitor Most of downtown of what we can cover with the people that we have and any really, we find birds on a lot of places. So basically, the larger the amount of glass and the more habitat around is you'll find more collisions there.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I did read that rocket mortgage field house was Is now participating in the program by turning off their lights, so that's got to be a huge it is.
Speaker 2:They're great people. They've been working with Matt Schumar and Harvey and the other collaborators to figure out what, what to do. They know that birds hit their windows and they want to help, which is awesome. So, you know, haven't you know? Knowing that you, you have people like that, that that say okay, we know it's a problem, what can we do to help?
Speaker 1:is awesome. I ask you how many birds you've collected this year so far?
Speaker 2:I don't remember offhand, I haven't looked at the data, but it, you know, fall on average. Typically you get about 800 to a thousand nine hundred birds or so in the spring and about Two thousand twenty five hundred in the fall. So it really depends, but it's starting to pick up. We had a 45 live bird day last week and that you know to other rehabilitators like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you get that many birds. I'm like that's not a big deal. 45 is easy to deal with. I mean, you know we're kind of set up in our, in our rehab center, where we have cages ready For the birds for the next day. So as long as we're not already loaded which does happen we have cages already pre-cleaned and ready. So when the volunteers bring the birds in for the morning, all you have to do is fill out their paperwork, get their medications and then get their cages, you know, with the food and everything's already set up. So it's a pretty quick process. So we've been able to get pretty good system going.
Speaker 1:Okay, can't wait to hear more about that process. But first I want to hear more about how someone like yourself Becomes a wildlife Recitation specialist, or what was your journey to this role along.
Speaker 2:I'm old, I'm 45. I'm gonna be 45 in October and I've I've been involved with wildlife since I was little, and so I would find sick cardinals or something when I was like Seven and I would take care of them illegally back in the 80s where you know, you know rehab centers like we do now. So and then just just had that, I've always had animals, I've always taken care of animals. So I In the late mid 90s I met a rehabilitator that was licensed to do raccoons and she had friends that did raptors, and so that I met the Madonna Raptor Center folks. There, you know they would send me out to catch Raptors that were injured. I'm pretty quick and so I can chase things down and catch them pretty quickly. So I would, you know, catch up Cooper's Hawk and take it out to Laura and missy over there at Madonna Raptor Center, and and then I just became friends with them and then I just learned about just I just got into that into the group of all the rehabilitators and then I started volunteering. I brought an injured Harry Woodpecker here that hit a window, ironically In 2007, I think it was, and so that started volunteering 2008, and then I just never left.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's, it's. I didn't go to college. I learned everything on my own just by studying wildlife and being a nerd studying birds and all the different native creatures in Ohio and Just kind of I just I bred cage birds and in and grade school and high school and so I just learned how to just do all that stuff just on my own and so then I became a volunteer here in 2008 and then I was a seasonal back then. It was a seasonal position in 2010.
Speaker 1:You didn't leave until they hired you is right, basically, yeah, where'd you grow up with town?
Speaker 2:Parmaites just a little. I actually technically grew up in Maple Heights, but then we moved to Parma in 1991, and so I'd been in local ever since that first little sparrow that you brought home?
Speaker 1:How did you know how to take care of it? What did you do for it?
Speaker 2:I just offered it food and rest and yeah, I remember specific one was a cardinal, for sure, I remember the male cardinal that probably had a window, who knows? And yeah, just took care of so you bring a bird here.
Speaker 1:It's been traumatized. It hit a building Middle of the night, wakes up here, do you? They're in pain, what? How do you treat just how do you make them comfortable? How do you take away their pain? And how? I mean how? You can't put a splint on a wing. You can, you can, yeah so.
Speaker 2:So the number one really rule with with wildlife rehabilitation is, if you have an injured or sick or orphan animal, keeping a warm, dark, quiet place until you can get to treatment for from a licensed Rehabilitator. So the main thing we do down there in downtown and I've taught the volunteers how to reduce stress on the birds so we capture them with with butterfly nets, um I, and then we place them in brown paper bags that are made with lights out Cleveland information that we collect down there, um, about the bird and then we transfer them to the car or someone's car as soon as possible to let them rest, because obviously went through a lot hitting the window and then a big monster picks you up and they think they're going to get eaten. They don't know we're trying to help. So you get them into a box or get them to the bag, get them back to a car, let them rest while you're continuing, you're monitoring for the morning, and then once they come here, we let them rest again because it's you know, obviously the drive here is stressful.
Speaker 2:So we bring them here, let them rest and then, once they're rested here, we give them about 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes depending, and then we administer medications to the birds and that helps reduce swelling of the brain and so, basically, when a bird hits a window, um, it doesn't die from a broken neck, they die from cranial swelling. It's basically like brain bleeding. So, um, in order to reduce the pain and swelling, you give them anti-inflammatories to help reduce that Uh, and that that really really helps. So that early you can get a bird treated, the better chance it has. So that's number one thing is so when they get here, we let them rest for a little bit, then we administer the medications and everything's really quick. So a lot of times news outlets will come and want to video and see things and I'm just like get the bird in the bag quick and it's like under a few seconds to treat these birds. And that's because we don't want to stress them out. You know they don't know we're trying to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So oftentimes when people bring an animal here to the center, um, you know they're petting it or talking to it and they think that's helping. But I, I I switched around on them and I say it would be like if you got injured in a T-Rex picked you up and was trying to talk to you and say you're going to be okay, how would you feel I'm going to eat and I'm dead?
Speaker 2:So state of shock a state of shock Correct, and so, um, oftentimes, when people see a bird in its eyes or closing, they think that that's, that's actually comfortability, but that's actually high stress. So birds are their bodies starting to shut down because of stress. So reducing stress is the number one thing. So that's what we do is reduce stress. So the, the, the medications help.
Speaker 2:Another thing that helps is is we have the setups um designed for the bird to succeed. So you know they don't want to be here, obviously, in captivity, Um, so we set the enclosures up with to make them feel comfortable. It's covered, so there's not a light getting in there, so they're not able to see out, so they're not trying to escape. And, um, we, some of the species like morning warblers, Connecticut warblers, yellow throats, wrens those guys like to be in in thick stuff, they're skulky, they kind of like to hide, and so if you don't put vegetation in there, they're a little bit more stressed out that way. So those species will get a branch with a bunch of leaves on it, Um, and that they can hide there. And then we offer insects um or other other things that they eat, um in the enclosure to help them feel comfortable. And because of all, that we have a really good success rate with with the released bird, so it it works out well.
Speaker 1:That's cool. And you do all this in the basement of the nature center here. How many people do you have working with you?
Speaker 2:So there's there's there's five staff members from kind of that right um in the six actually in in wildlife and, um, there's me and uh two other part time, two other full time people um in wildlife, and then there's there's uh four, uh part time, and so then they some of those help in rehab and do education programs and also help with our educational animals, and then others help and just rehab, and that's I'm the only one that does only rehab. So, um, the wildlife rehab specialist here, so I run rehab along with my coworker, kyle Koprowski, so he helps down there too, um, and we just we do it together. And then we have a ton of volunteers and interns that help. So it's a lot of work.
Speaker 1:What advice do you have, if, if people find an injured animal on the road or whatever, what should they do?
Speaker 2:The main thing we're always educating on is put if you can safely put the animal into enclosure, like a box or a shoe box or something like that, with no food or water, in a warm, dark, quiet place, don't do anything else. No food, no water. Um, because often people want to help and they try to look up on Google what to do. And if you Google, if I flat my arms fast enough, can I fly? It's probably yes, on there somewhere so you can find unbiasedly any information you want on there that's going to fit your narrative. So you don't want to trust Google with how to care for wildlife.
Speaker 1:So basically, don't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, call a licensed rehabilitator and then we can instruct you what to do, cause we often have people that are well-meaning, people that do the wrong thing, and we had a person today that called about an animal they've had for three, five weeks now, and the weight of the animal was incredibly low for what it should be, and they meant well, but that brought it here or called first cause.
Speaker 2:It's something that we don't take here, um, but always call licensed rehabilitator cause. They're going to have the information. That's true, and and what to do and what number should people call?
Speaker 2:So our number here is 440-871-2900. That's the main line to the to Lake Ernie Trian Science Center. So that'll go right to the front desk and they'll answer the phone. And if they don't answer there's different prompts you can put to go to wildlife and that's extension 204. So you just leave a message and we can call you back between nine and four, um every day of the week, um every week of the year. We're here every single day. Um often people you know have holidays that they can take off, but the animals need to be cared for. So the wildlife staff is here year round, every weather doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like the sewer district. I went to the clean water fest over the weekend. They're like the water doesn't stop flowing. We got to be here all the time, yeah, year round, 24 seven. So um, I appreciate you calling me back so fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do, and that's one of the compliments we get. Um, many compliments that we get is that we call people back and and you know some of these, uh, other centers, um, they're either, you know, through their own house or they're it's a private person, and so you know you don't have to call people back. But we want to be able to reach those people too, educate them on their situation, but also be able to help the animal that they. That's a need you know we get. Every year is different, but on average we get five to 6,000 phone calls a year about wildlife situations. So there's a, there's, I want to trap a skunk in my yard, or the baby squirrel that I've just found in my yard, which is happening a lot now. I had a bird hit a window and all those things. So you know, or what is this poop we get? We get that often too, and so you know we're here to help the people. So calling us first is the best way because we can, you know, we can see what to do with that situation.
Speaker 1:I want to wrap up with our tip time and to see you know what kind of parting thoughts you might have for our listeners.
Speaker 2:A couple of the main things that think that I think about when you ask that question is is keeping cats indoors? I'm a crazy cat dad. I have six cats. I love all of them, but cats are, they belong indoors, they're safer indoors and they they destroy our native wildlife populations. I mean cats, kill, kill. I mean up to 3.5 billion songbirds a year in the United States. That's insane to think about. And one thing that I didn't mention is that we have lost 25% of our songbird populations to 70s. They're gone, not coming back. And a couple of the main things of that are cats windows, you know insecticides, you know climate change, habitat destruction all that combined is is a huge problem for these birds and other animals. But cats is easy one Close them up, don't let them out or make a catio, because every day all summer, every couple of times a day minimum, people are calling about there, my cat just brought me this or my cat just brought me that, and that's fully, fully preventable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and cats are mean too. They'll play with them. You know they'll like whack them around. It is, and I've seen it happen.
Speaker 2:And it's not. The cats aren't being mean, they're doing their thing, it's a toy to them and that's unfortunate, that that's so common and it's so frustrating as a rehabilitator because you know I might sound like it. No, I mean it sounds like I hate cats, but luckily I have six of them and I love my cats.
Speaker 2:So you can say that yeah, so, but it really sold. Keeping cats indoors is number one, you know, making sure that your yard is is wildlife friendly. So planting native plants, reducing and eliminating non native plants, you know, is a is a huge step because once you you're planting I have a little prairie in my backyard that I have native plants growing and milkweed and all the other native flowers and it's it helps the environment because it helps the pollinators and then that in turn helps the birds, which helps all kinds of other things. So, you know, keeping your everything native and reducing lighting obviously is one thing. If you can reduce lighting, put, you know, feather friendly on your windows that are large and you have had collisions on before and just respecting our environment because it's, you know, we're the ones that can control it. So try to help if you can.
Speaker 1:What about low voltage lighting like landscape lighting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fine. Basically, any lighting that's like pointing downward, is better. So the less lighting is better. You know, with the night sky and the planetarium, folks are for the same reason that we are just a different, different way. You know they want it dark so we can enjoy the night sky and see all the stars, and we want it so the birds can continue their flights safely, and it's the same thing. So any light lighting you could reduce is better. And if you have to have safety lighting on or lighting on decadently, you know if it's facing down is better. So if it's facing up then you have more issues.
Speaker 1:Okay, and your favorite place to birdwatch.
Speaker 2:So many. Huntington Reservation is awesome. There's. It's great for songbirds. We actually had one thing I didn't touch on with the with the rehab birds as we work with Pottermore Avian Research Center in in Pittsburgh tagging some of these lights out Cleveland birds with modus transmitters so we can see where they're going and how they're surviving. And Luke DeGroote over there, is the head guy over there and he was going to dig into the data this fall to figure out what you know, what we're going to learn about it. But we had two Kirtland's warblers pass over our tower here two years ago I think it was, and it was October 12, I think and so that's a critically endangered songbird in North America and it passed through our reservation here. So we get a lot of cool stuff here.
Speaker 2:So songbirds, I think the number one place I think is Huntington. It's an awesome place to bird. Wendy Park is also awesome because a little small, little migrant trap right next to downtown, so they're make it safe there. That's an awesome place. I'm always at the Coast Guard Station out there the old Coast Guard Station looking for gulls and ducks in the winter, and so Wendy Park and Huntington are my two favorite places for songbirds and just birds in general, but any of the Cleveland Metro Parks parks are awesome for wildlife. Last, I just proved last year or two years ago that North American River Otters are breeding in the park, which is huge.
Speaker 1:North American what?
Speaker 2:North American River, otters.
Speaker 1:Oh River Otters.
Speaker 2:And there's a bobcat that's been seen twice in the summer in one of the parks and that's huge because they're making a comeback. So just the parks are awesome for many things like I don't play sports but people play sports at some of these parts of the park, but for me it's the wildlife and so much parks. Cleveland Metro Parks just has an awesome place for all these birds and just anyone on the lakefront. So Edgewater all the way to East 55th Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve is a really, really good spot to bird to. That's one of the best places to see northern saw what owls in the winter, because they winter and actually they spend the winter here a lot of them and so it's a tiny little 100 gram owl that they come through in their migratory. So they come through mostly in the then spend the winter.
Speaker 2:We did have a young bird brought in the summer this year and so that meant that bird was native at bread. Here it was. It was. It was born here and hatched here. So actually tracked down the person that brought the bird and I found out he let me come to his property and assess it and I found the parents and other siblings. So that's a confirmed that they were bred. I don't know how often they've been confirmed breeding here, but it's super rare, so so, but yes, anyway, cleveland Lakefront's great, so there's you got your finger on the pulse for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to listen to this episode and write down every bird you just mentioned there's probably like 50 or more yeah yeah. I love your enthusiasm. Never a dull moment in your life.
Speaker 2:I'm always on the go, for sure.
Speaker 3:We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak CLE. You can find our full catalog of episodes on Spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available the first and third Tuesday of each month. Please follow EcoSpeak CLE on Facebook and Instagram and become part of the conversation. If you would like to send us feedback and suggestions, or if you'd like to become a sponsor of EcoSpeak CLE, you can email us at hello at ecospeaksclecom. Stay tuned for more important and inspiring stories to come.
