Green Light for Nocturnally Migrating Birds

By H. Poot, B. Ens, H. Vries, Maurice A. H. Donners, M. Wernand, J. Marquenie. 2008

201 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The nighttime sky is increasingly illuminated by artificial light sources. Although this ecological light pollution is damaging ecosystems throughout the world, the topic has received relatively little attention. Many nocturnally migrating birds die or lose a large amount of their energy reserves during migration as a result of encountering artificial light sources. This happens, for instance, in the North Sea, where large numbers of nocturnally migrating birds are attracted to the many offshore platforms. Our aim is to develop bird-friendly artificial lighting that meets human demands for safety but does not attract and disorient birds. Our current working hypothesis is that artificial light interferes with the magnetic compass of the birds, one of several orientation mechanisms and especially important during overcast nights. Laboratory experiments have shown the magnetic compass to be wavelength dependent: migratory birds require light from the blue-green part of the spectrum for magnetic compass orientation, whereas red light (visible long-wavelength) disrupts magnetic orientation. We designed a field study to test if and how changing light color influenced migrating birds under field conditions. We found that nocturnally migrating birds were disoriented and attracted by red and white light (containing visible long-wavelength radiation), whereas they were clearly less disoriented by blue and green light (containing less or no visible long- wavelength radiation). This was especially the case on overcast nights. Our results clearly open perspective for the development of bird-friendly artificial lighting by manipulating wavelength characteristics. Preliminary results with an experimentally developed bird-friendly light source on an offshore platform are promising. What needs to be investigated is the impact of bird-friendly light on other organisms than birds.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/70a42819d529cc61a167a50b5b1a97fd74a8ef3e

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Citations in the corpus

Artificial night lighting disrupts sex pheromone in a noctuid moth (2015, background): “, 2012) in order to reduce their ecological impact (Poot et al., 2008).”
The ecological impacts of nighttime light pollution: a mechanistic appraisal (2013, background): “This has led to calls for the spectral composition of artificial lighting to be managed to mitigate against disorientation of birds (Poot et al., 2008), however the level of disorientation caused by particular wavelengths of light appears to vary according to intensity, and is not restricted to red ”
The decline of moths in Great Britain: a review of possible causes (2013, background): “Artificial light elicits a wide range of responses in many animal and plant species, but there is insufficient knowledge about impacts in the wild, especially among invertebrates (Longcore &Rich, 2004; Rich & Longcore, 2006; Sutherland et al., 2006; Poot et al., 2008; Royal Commission on Environment”
Dark Matters: The Effects of Artificial Lighting on Bats (2016, background): “Birds migrating at night often approach bright lights instead of following their normal migration route, possibly because the light interferes with their magnetic compass (Poot et al. 2008).”
Bright lights in the big cities: migratory birds’ exposure to artificial light (2019, background): “…birds, direct mortality as a result of collisions due to attraction to light (Gauthreux and Belser 2005) is the most obvious and direct effect of ALAN, but there are also more subtle effects, such as disrupted orientation (Poot et al. 2008) and changes in habitat selection (McLaren et al. 2018).”
Conserving energy at a cost to biodiversity? Impacts of LED lighting on bats (2012, background): “…evidence that artificial light pollution can have detrimental behavioural effects on a wide range of taxa, e.g. birds (Le Corre et al., 2002; Poot et al., 2008; Kempenaers et al., 2010), amphibians and reptiles (Wang et al., 2007; Perry et al., 2008), small mammals (Bird et al., 2004) and…”