Nearly 1,000 songbirds died colliding with the lit-up windows of a Chicago convention center

Bright lights in Chicago confused migrating songbirds flying south for the winter, with nearly 1,000 colliding with the windows of the city’s McCormick Place convention center and dying as a result.

The collisions happened Thursday, and the dead specimens were collected by the city’s Field Museum, which said on X that it was the most birds they have documented after such an event in 40 years. 

Around 964 dead birds were found near McCormick Place, coming from 33 species, the museum told the Associated Press.

“It was just like a carpet of dead birds at the windows there. A normal night would be zero to 15 (dead) birds. It was just kind of a shocking outlier to what we’ve experienced,” David Willard, a retired bird division collections manager at the Field Museum who investigated the scene of the carnage, told the AP.

Weather conditions exacerbated the issue. Birds wait for ideal conditions to move en masse, and warm southern winds kept birds in place, building up a larger crowd to eventually move when conditions were right on Wednesday night.

Rain before dawn on Thursday morning led the birds to seek lower altitudes, putting them in the path of the stationary buildings.

The windows of McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center building, located close to Lake Michigan, have proved a recurring issue for migrating birds, leading to the annual collection of dead specimens during the migratory seasons.

However, the building is one of many posing a problem. Volunteer conservationists with the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors posted on X that they had found another 1,000 dead birds in the rest of Chicago’s downtown.

Thursday’s event was dramatic in regards to the number of birds that died. Still, the group explained in another post on X that during the various migratory seasons, six months of the year in total, they find as many as 100 dead birds daily.

Another 600 million birds flew over Illinois on Friday, drawing the attention of Governor J.B. Pritzker.

“Turn your lights off if you can and let’s help the birds on their way,” Gov. Pritzker wrote on X.