CROSBY TWP., Ohio — Ron Canterbury pops open his tailgate and turns a grocery bag upside down. Inside that bag are dozens of Ziploc bags filled with dead birds.
They tumble onto his truck bed. Most did not live one year.
“This pile here is just one species,” Canterbury said. “And that’s all from campus.”
He is standing near a research field in Crosby Township. Other birds chirp from brown plastic bags sealed by clothespins.
“There’s so many birds,” Canterbury said. “I can’t keep up.”
A team of his students are trapping and tagging them, so he can study how long they live and where they end up. The ornithologist at the University of Cincinnati has been studying the animal for decades. And every morning, some of his students walk routes on campus — including the VA Medical Center, EPA office and medical campus.
They’re looking for dead birds.
And they say they almost always find them. The cause? Windows.
See why students are protesting bird deaths at UC:
Sydney Morgan bends over near a trash can. The student takes out a phone and snaps a picture. Then, Morgan picks up a bird and places it into a bag.
"These birds, I don't see them flying around the campus," Morgan said. "The only time you see song birds, at least for me, is on the ground."
For this one, Canterbury got a text from a maintenance worker. In 2017, Ash Conway remembers when students documented about 200 deaths a year. Now, Canterbury says the number of deaths is close to 1,000.
“They are telling us something is wrong,” Canterbury said. “Scientists like me are sounding the alarm. But we don’t have enough people taking action.”
Conway laughs when I ask why she loves birds. It's a question that can't be answered in one soundbite. Birds keep insect populations down, help cut down on disease and also act as pollinators to native plants.
“We need birds as much as they need us,” Conway said.
Conway is the founder of Queer Birders of Cincinnati. She organized a protest at UC on Monday, the result of one day in September, where at least 50 birds were found dead.
Typically, Canterbury tells me his students record about 8 deaths. The professor called this a “mass mortality” event, and says it likely happened because of a long period of drought followed by intense rain. That caused migrating birds to seek shelter wherever they could.
“They are disoriented,” Canterbury said. “It’s like a maze for them trying to find their way out.”
A maze they often don’t survive.
A UC spokeswoman declined an interview request for this story, but said the university is committed to taking a comprehensive approach to building design. Earlier this year, officials added window stickers to the old chemistry building during an expensive renovation.
Canterbury says it reduced the number of bird deaths from about 20 to 4.
The stickers help birds realize something is unnatural — instead of seeing a tree reflected in the glass and trying to fly to it. He is hopeful university officials will take similar action with other buildings. Because in North America, hundreds of millions of birds die each year by flying into buildings, according to the National Audubon Society.
Some studies estimate it could be more than 1 billion.
“It’s just so heartbreaking. Hopefully we can take action before it’s too late," Canterbury said. “If you ever want to see a dead bird, all you got to do is wake up and go right there."
He's pointing to a connector hallway outside Turner Hall at UC. There are smudges on the floor-to-ceiling windows.
He says they were left by birds.
Conway started a petition, urging university officials to do more. You can find the petition by clicking this link.
