CCRx is pleased to host a talk and creative reuse workshop related to bird migration on Saturday April 12.
At noon, join us for Bird Migration Monitoring in Chicagoland, a talk by J'orge Garcia of Windy City Bird Lab.
Followed at 1pm by Bird-Making Workshop for Bird Collisions in the Anthropocene, a service project to make fabric birds for a nationwide art project. Both events are free / pay what you wish, but please register.
Why birds?
Last fall, the Windy City Bird Lab put an acoustic bird migration monitor on the roof of our warehouse to find out what birds were migrating. It is part of the Chicago Bird Migration Monitoring Network, a collaborative effort to track the movements of migratory birds through Chicagoland using acoustics, thermal imagery, radar, and other technologies.
J'orge Garcia, Director of the Windy City Bird Lab, will talk about the birds that migrate through Chicagoland and these new ways to monitor their passage. Their growing network of Nocturnal Flight Call (NFC) recorders, launched in 2023 with foundational support from Cornell and Openlands, now spans 35 stations in collaboration with the University of Illinois, tracking migratory bird movement in across the Chicagoland region including the roof of the Willis “Sears” Tower, the Adler Planetarium, Northwestern University and the CCRx Warehouse at the Envision Unlimited Frick Center!
Click on the link below to see daily results of species, numbers and time of day for migrating birds.
Help us make 10,836 birds!
It isn't enough to just learn about birds -- how can creative reuse be part of saving them?
Enter Bird Collisions in the Anthropocene, an art installation in the works that intends to bring awareness to the many ways that bird migration is interrupted by unmarked glass windows and buildings.
Artist Holly Greenberg is enlisting people across the country to make 10,836 replicas of actual migrating birds using found fabric and other materials. That is the number of birds killed from a window collision and collected on the streets of Chicago in 2023.
Chicago lies in the migratory path of over 300 species of birds, making it the most dangerous city in the country for our avian friends. In one night alone, 966 birds struck just one building on Chicago’s lakefront. Through crowdsourcing the crafting of these bird replicas, the artist will create a “carpet” of birds running over 300 feet in length. Using upcycled cloth and donated materials to create the birds, she invites citizens to help with the project through public workshops or from their own homes.
Local artist Jackie Riffice has conducted several bird-making workshops as service projects and several more are planned in the village of Flossmoor before sending the boxes of birds to Holly’s New York studio. Jackie will make the bird bodies and the participants can create several birds.
Understanding how you can protect your home from bird-window collisions is paramount to the project, which is why teaching about how to identify and modify your problematic windows is at the forefront of our mission. Please explore her website to find out how you can become involved through volunteering, creating a bird, and making your windows safe for birds.
Check out this video to learn more:
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