"The sky above us is a complex ecosystem, just like the land and sea. A new field of research is bringing a fresh understanding of the birds, bugs and other species that live there"
"Each year on September 11, visitors gather at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan to watch an art installation called Tribute in Light. Two ramrod-straight beams pierce the night sky, representing the fallen Twin Towers and all the people who perished from the attack. Each beam is made using 44 blazing 7,000-watt xenon spotlights. On a clear night, people in the New York area can see the display within a 60-mile radius—it’s beautiful, soul-stirring, poignant.
The light show is also mesmerizing to passing birds. Early September is the peak of fall migration along the Atlantic Coast, and birds from the northern United States and Canada—from warblers to sparrows to nighthawks—are streaming south through the skies above Manhattan. Once the tribute switches on, something comes over them: Researchers using weather radar and other types of remote sensing found in 2015 that the number of birds in the vicinity increased from 500 to nearly 16,000.
As the birds enter the columns of light, each beam measuring 48 feet by 48 feet, they become so mesmerized that they forget themselves and their journey. They circle, zombie-like, inside the beams in growing numbers, calling out loudly, and their circling grows lower in altitude. If they fly too low in this disoriented state, they risk crashing into buildings or onto the pavement."
