![Let there be Night: How light pollution harms migrating birds](https://lakevillejournal.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=52249089&width=1200&height=794)
Alison Robey
If last month’s solar eclipse taught me anything, it’s that we all still love seeing cool stuff in the sky. I don’t think we realize how fast astronomical wonders are fading out of sight: studies show that our night skies grow about 10% brighter every year, and the number of visible stars plummets as a result. At this rate, someone born 18 years ago to a sky with 250 visible stars would now find only 100 remaining.
Vanishing stars may feel like just a poetic tragedy, but as I crouch over yet another dead Wood Thrush on my morning commute, the consequences of light pollution feel very real. Wincing, I snap a photo of the tawny feathers splayed around his broken neck on the asphalt.
It’s not the only such photo I’ll take this year. The building whose towering windows took this thrush’s life is infamous; like many other passersby, I pay close attention to the ground around such spots to record any victims. We upload our morbid photography to iNaturalist, an app usually reserved for more cheerful records and identifications of flora and fauna, where they automatically join several citizen science projects focused on bird-window collisions.
Why the macabre gallery? These collections provide concrete evidence of just how many birds windows kill. Ideally, that information encourages tactics to reduce casualties, like lobbying homeowners and institutions to add decals or screens to their glass.
Though such measures are critical for limiting window strikes during the day, we often overlook the damage our windows cause at night. Remarkably, most bird migration actually occurs by moonlight; if you stand under the stars and listen during migration — which began in earnest last week — an audible chorus of chirps and buzzes overhead indicates a sky full of birds.
Birds evolved to fly under the cover of darkness for many reasons. Nightly travel means they can spend the bright, bug-filled days gathering food. Darkness helps migrants avoid predators, and the lower turbulence and cooler temperatures of nighttime skies allows for more energetically efficient flights.
Though the specifics of nocturnal navigation are a longstanding ornithological mystery, that navigation is undoubtedly disrupted by the growing brightness of the night sky. Bright lights disorient the birds’ sense of direction and attract them towards the light sources themselves. In that state of confusion, nocturnal window strikes skyrocket.
In the U.S., one billion birds die each year by flying into windows. Distinct behavioral changes around brightly lit structures are the main cause of mortality: the usual conversation of nocturnal flight calls grows into a confused cacophony. Those that avoid collisions face different risks: the energy they waste investigating unfamiliar lights means they’ll have a harder time avoiding predators, catching enough food, and reaching their final destinations.
The harm caused by light pollution is not limited to birds. Even in rural areas, many nocturnal animals struggle to adapt to brightening nighttime environments: bats can’t fly efficiently, amphibians can’t reproduce normally, and insects can’t forage effectively.
Humans aren’t immune either. Brighter nights disrupt our sleep cycles — something I can personally attest to, as someone who grew up in Kent and now struggles nightly with the brightness of New Haven — and are associated with a slew of negative health effects. And though people widely associate more lights with greater safety, evidence of this is mixed.
Despite the repercussions, the reach and severity of light pollution keeps growing. Electricity usage in the U.S. is on the rise again; while much of that energy has more intensive uses, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that 6% of residential and 17% of commercial energy is all for lighting.
As disheartened as I am by increasing energy usage and vanishing stars, by unnecessary lights glaring from empty sports fields or barren storage facilities, and by dead songbirds on my morning commute, there is a silver lining to this story. Fixing most pollution problems — microplastics, oil spills, atmospheric CO2 — requires complex, intractable solutions. Light pollution, on the other hand, is completely, immediately, effectively reversible.
This is a critical time of year to make that change. The transition from April to May brings spring rains, bursting tree buds, and a deluge of migrating birds: cheerful songs of Yellow Warblers, gleaming feathers of Scarlet Tanagers, playful flights of American Redstarts. You can watch these migrants gather above your home like a rising storm using BirdCast, Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s avian version of a weather radar.
The closer that storm comes, the more important it is to flip those light switches off. Simple steps, like limiting the use of aesthetic lighting, keeping the beams of necessary lights targeted, dim, and warmly colored, or curtaining bright windows, make all the difference to our birds. Participating in darkening the skies this spring will help keep these little travelers aloft — and maybe bring some stars back into view, too.
Alison Robey is a writer for the Kent Land Trust, a volunteer at the Sharon Audubon Center, and a third-year PhD candidate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Yale University.
MILLERTON — Linda Kaplan, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, sister-in-law, cousin and friend, passed away Sept. 3, 2024. Linda will be remembered as a deeply kind woman guided by faith, family and love.
Linda was born to Francis Crawford and Lydia Johnson (nee Snyder) in Sharon, on Sept. 14, 1942. She attended Webutuck High School in Millerton, and then started her career in banking, where she worked until her retirement as a Vice President. Linda was a loving mother who raised her two sons and instilled in them her love of faith and family.
Linda met her future husband, Sanford (Sam) Kaplan, at a dance in Millerton, and they were blessed with 30 years of marriage during which they enjoyed their time on Simmons Street. Here, Linda enjoyed tending to her garden where she could be found picking green beans and tomatoes. She also enjoyed solving the daily crossword puzzle, knitting, and listening to Sam play his guitar. Together, Linda and Sam enjoyed hosting their family for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Passover celebrations. They especially enjoyed annual summer visits by their granddaughters which always included visits to their farm where they rode ATVs. Linda and Sam’s interest in dairy farming led them to travel to Europe where they toured dairy farms; a trip they fondly recounted to their family for years.
Linda’s faith was evident, not only through her family, but also through her involvement with the Millerton Presbyterian Church. She enjoyed community outreach, singing in the choir, working with children, teaching ESL classes, and helping to develop and implement programs.
Linda is predeceased by her husband, Sam Kaplan, her mother, father, and brother Thomas Crawford. She is survived by her two sons; Lorin Stapleton and his wife Mary Stapleton of Brewster, New York, and Brian Stapleton of Sandisfield, Massachusettds; her two granddaughters, Bridget Stapleton of Jersey City, New Jersey and Colleen Stapleton of Boston, Massachusetts; her sister-in-law, Susan Crawford; nephew David Keys and his wife Barbara; niece Susan Jenkins and her husband Rick Herring.
Calling hours will be held on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. at the Scott D. Conklin Funeral Home, 37 Park Avenue, Millerton, NY 12546. A Mass of the Christian Burial will be celebrated on Saturday, Sept. 7, at 10 a.m. at St. Martin of Tours Church of St. Mary in Lakeville, CT. Rev. Dennis Arambasick will officiate. Burial will follow at Irondale Cemetery in Millerton, NY. To send an online condolence to the family, please visit www.conklinfuneralhome.com
David Colbert with one of his sculptures on the sculpture walk he has created over 35 years.
The Cornwall Open Studio took place on Saturday, Aug. 31. It is a Cornwall tradition and has been taking place for eighteen years.
It is a day when Cornwall artists invite the public into their studios to see what they are working on and how they do it. The artists work in various media, including painting, sculpture, photography and artistic shoes.
To participate, prospective tourists go to cornwallct.org/event/cornwall-open-studio-2024/ where a map and a list of the artists is available to download and print. The event is free, there is no registration, and so armed with the map, those taking the tour are set to explore not only artists’ studios, but the beautiful drive through Cornwall.
David Colbert, sculptor, is the initiator of the event. He said of his work, “I was smitten by the geometry and eventually the geometry led me to art.” Behind his studio in Cornwall Bridge he has a quarter mile sculpture path which he has been building for the past thirty-five years. Those on the tour could meander down the path and enjoy the beauty of the geometrically derived works.
Asked if there were any special artists and studios that should not be missed, he said, “I can’t help but mention Tim Prentice, whose shop, barn and whole place is pretty amazing.” At Prentice’s studio in West Cornwall, an old barn, mobiles, and other kinetic works of art hang from walls and ceilings and populate the surrounding fields. Across the road, another barn holds larger sculptures.
At 93, Prentice still works most days in the studio beside his house. He said he works on “small things.” He struggles with fading eyesight due to macular degeneration. He will be in a film by The Vision and Art Project, which seeks to bring awareness of macular degeneration by featuring artists like Tim Prentice. The film will be shown at the Cornwall Library sometime in the coming months.
In spite of his failing eye sight, he enjoys getting out to the studio and working and was welcoming visitors on the tour.
Another interesting studio is that of Lauren Brinkers Shoes in Cornwall Bridge. The shoes are hand painted and “one of a kind.” “I studied in London and went to shoe making school there,” Brinkers said. “I studied traditional men’s shoe making and transitioned into women’s.” She wanted to bring “more color and expression into shoes.” She learned how to work with leather dyes and paints the shoes to accomplish this goal.
A display of Lauren Brinkers handmade, one of a kind , hand paintied shoes on display at her Cornwall studio.Robin Roraback
Next to Lauren Brinkers’ studio is that of Stephan Sagmiller, who shows with his photographs that “The world is worth looking at closely. You’ve got to look at them up close. That’s my ethos as an artist.” His photos are large and colorful and invite you to do just that — look up close.
In West Cornwall, the abstract landscapes of Suzan Scott were on display at the Souterrain Gallery. Scott says of her work, “I’ve always had a strong connection with nature. I see everything, every blade of grass.” It was overwhelming for her. She began to paint still lives thinking they’d be easier, but in doing so she realized that still lives are similar to landscapes in that she could break down the parts as she did for still lives. “Why not go out and do landscapes and simplify them — abstract them?”
Her process is to layer tinted glazes, sometimes as many as thirty. She will work on a painting, let it rest, go back to it, work some more, and continue this until the painting is finished, which can take a week or months.
Scott paints scenes from the northwest corner and has “favorite spots” that she revisits. “The more I see it, the more I can interpret it, and it becomes mine.”
These are just a few of the artists on the tour. There were also Curt Hanson’s beautiful landscapes and the looser, colorful paintings of Magaly Ohika, Katherine Freygang and Sally Van Doren. Photographers Nick Jacobs and Bela Selendy also opened their studios. They use their cameras to explore life and nature.
If you missed the tour this year, be sure to keep an eye out for it next Labor Day Weekend. It is a wonderful way to spend a Saturday. To contact these artists or find out more about their work, go to: cornwallct.org/history-culture/arts-artists/ or go to the tour website to find links to their websites.
Fresh donuts by Hanna Rybolt at ILSE Coffee.
Something scrumptious is cooking beneath Colonial Theatre.
Pastries by Hanna was established in February of 2024 at 27 Railroad St. in North Canaan. The owner, Hanna Rybolt, is a resident of Canaan who studied in the pastry program at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Her interest in baking is rooted in fond memories with her family. The baked goods and pastry products are sold locally at ILSE Coffee just next door, as well as the Great Barrington farmer’s market. Her pastry kitchen is located below Colonial Theatre.
Rybolt aims to ensure the goods are produced with locally grown products and sold in community businesses. Pastries by Hanna’s best-selling product is brioche-style donuts.
The business is solely owned and operated by Rybolt, who stated she is looking forward to what the future will bring for the bakery and is hoping to collaborate with more companies in the area.
Customers can custom order goods online at pastriesbyhanna.com or check out her Instagram page @PastriesbyHanna.