Chicago’s crowded skies

4 CHICAGO TRIBUNE | SECTION 6 | SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2009 C

CoverStory

It’s the thick of the city’s rush towork when Annette Prince’s redcell phone chirps in her vestpocket.

At barely 8:10 a.m., this isPrince’s fifth call since daybreak.She answers as she always doeswhen the red phone rings: “Chi-cago Bird Collision Monitors.” Butthis time she barely says a word,

just nods and folds the phone. She’s sprinting now, north on

Franklin, east on Madison, birder’snet bobbing over her right shoul-der. She’s not waiting for the “Don’tWalk” sign to change. She’s oblivi-ous of the taxi peeling round thecorner, headed straight toward herand her khaki-colored duds that,frankly, seem more suited to thewoods than the Loop on a workdaymorning.

Up two granite slabs, across asleek contemporary plaza, arounda bend and there, in the shadows ofthe “L” tracks, Prince pauses,breathless.

No bigger than a windblown oakleaf, a golden-crowned kinglet

cowers on the sidewalk. It has hitthe glass of the see-through lobby,trying to land, most likely, in theluscious bamboo grove just on theother side of that invisible, impene-trable wall.

Prince drops to her knees on thecity sidewalk, net raised, ready forthe catch.

Her humble genuflection, thatancient pose of veneration at thefoot of something sacred, is so outof place amid the mad-dash rushthat, up and down the sidewalk,workers stop and turn and stare.

It’s as if a moment’s grace hasfloated down into the big, bad city.

The kinglet’s eyes are closed. Hischirping comes weakly, if persist-ently.

Prince works calmly, clear-headedly, as if she has done this10,000 times, which in fact she has.

She drapes the net’s fine meshover the bird and with her otherhand cups the feathered moundand holds him still. Then she reach-es into her Whole Foods shoppingbag, pulls out a brown paper lunchsack, lines it with a tissue andsmoothly slides in the kinglet.

All that’s left, for now, is to folddown the bag, clip it and fill out thelabel. The plain brown bag servesas sidewalk triage chamber; often,it’s all it takes to soothe a frazzledbird.

“You’re dealing with life-or-deathissues here,” says Prince, 51, aspeech pathologist by day who forthe last four years has been direc-tor of the all-volunteer ChicagoBird Collision Monitors, an on-the-spot rescue squad of the ChicagoAudubon Society.

Before Prince’s work is done forthe day, that dazed kinglet will havesteadied himself, hitched a car rideout to Willowbrook Wildlife Centerin Glen Ellyn and, far from thelethal urban grid, taken off amidthe trees. Course adjusted, he’ll flyhis merry way, rejoining theautumnal migration that each fallbrings some 8 million birds flap-ping through the Big Bright City bythe Lake.

For migrating birds — some notmuch heavier than a leaf, some thesize of a small chicken — Chicagois a sky-scraping, crazy-makingobstacle of light and glass andbuilding block thrown in the pathof their flyway, that airspace thatstretches from the northern borealforests of Canada down to the pris-tine rain forests of Peru.

Indeed, thousands of songbirdsdie each migration as they try tonavigate the city’s night sky, mis-taking kilowatts for stars. It’s par-ticularly deadly on overcast nightswhen low-slung clouds occludecelestial stars and push the birds tolower altitudes.

And at the dawn it only seems toget worse, with lobbies lit up likeoverzealous Christmas tree lots,and tired, thirsty, hungry flocksbanging into glass that they can’tsee, let alone comprehend. All theyseem to know is there’s a tree inthere, or a pool or waterfall orspewing fountain. And for the lifeof them — and too often that is thetoll — they can’t get through theglass.

But here’s the hopeful glimmer:As much as any sky-scraping me-tropolis is inherently inhospitableto high-flying wild things, Chicagois doing as much as, if not morethan, any other American city tomake way for the night-flying song-birds’ twice-yearly swing throughtown.

Birds have been making theirway along this route, following thewater’s edge from Lake Superior toLake Michigan to the rivers thatflow into the Mississippi River,down what’s called the MississippiFlyway, since the dawn of time.

Annette Price takes care of theinjured and the dead in her rounds

as a Chicago Bird Collision Monitor,including a fox sparrow, clockwise

from far left, American woodcocks

and a red-tailed hawk. MICHAEL

TERCHA/TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS PHOTOS

Flocks of volunteers makesure migrating birds safely

navigate our city By Barbara Mahany

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