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Communication towers pose a deadly obstacle for migrating birds.

Charles Kemper, now retired from his career as a small-town physician, recalls the news that prompted him to undertake one of the most thorough and longest-lasting scientific studies of bird mortality.

On the night of August 29, 1957, he heard reports that a massive bird kill was taking place near a television tower in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. "A lady living close to the TV tower noticed that it was raining birds. They were coming down on her roof, garage, and lawn. Her neighbors reported the same phenomenon."

A local health official thought the birds were struck by some avian plague and ordered them to be buried at the city dump. A local biologist theorized that the kill was caused by poisoning. Yet another person insisted the birds were electrocuted by the tower, recalls Kemper.

But after further investigation and consultation with several ornithologists, Kemper concluded that the reason for the bird deaths was right in front of them: the birds were running into the tower itself. For the next 38 years, the World War II veteran spent many an early morning collecting dead and dying birds from the foot of the tower and keeping rigorous records of his finds.

On foggy nights, says Kemper, the birds, attracted to its lights, fly toward and around the tower--often with unfortunate consequences. "I have heard them strike the wire and hit the ground as I stood under the tower," reports Kemper. One time, "birds were falling steadily at two or three per minute."

Kemper, now 79 years old, remembers one particularly severe kill. "I spent pretty near all day picking up everything I could, but I couldn't pick them all up--it was hardly possible." Over the next several years, Kemper would record or collect from beneath the tower 121,560 dead birds--an average of 3,200 each year--representing 123 species.

Says Kemper, "The problem seems to have been largely ignored and forgotten, but it has not gone away." Fortunately, at least one individual is not ignoring the problem. In fact, bird expert Bill Evans is doing everything he can to make sure the dying birds are neither ignored nor forgotten.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:39 AM