One way to keep birds safe is as easy as flipping a switch! Here's why you should turn lights out during bird migration.
This Is the No. 1 Thing You Should Do to Protect Migrating Birds
Published on Apr. 25, 2025
There are few phenomena in nature as magical as bird migration. Birds no larger than your pointer finger travel thousands of miles to reach new destinations, often navigating harsh or inhospitable conditions. They soar over deserts, across oceans, and through cities, and they face great danger along the way.
Cities can pose a huge risk for birds, although perhaps not for the reasons you’d think. While collisions with cars are a danger, lights and buildings pose an even greater problem — and that holds true in the suburbs, too. Here’s why turning off the lights is the best thing you can do to help keep migrating birds safe.
These bird migration patterns have changed over the years.
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Why Is Turning Lights Out Important During Bird Migration?
You might or might not have already known that most birds migrate at night. What you almost certainly didn’t know is that lights — a constant in our everyday lives — pose a serious danger to those migrating birds.
“Window collisions kill more than one billion birds annually in the U.S., and one of the main causes is artificial lights at night,” Hannah Partridge, Community Action Manager at the National Audubon Society, says. Hannah explains that most collisions happen in low-rise and residential settings, and that any lights can pose a problem for birds.
Dozens of species are affected, including high-priority birds like wood thrushes and golden-winged warblers.
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According to the National Audubon Society’s Lights Out Program page, even if the birds survive they expend energy to get back on track. Confused birds may tire and become vulnerable to threats.
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What Can Birders Do to Help?
Protecting migrating birds is easier than you might think: in fact, it’s as simple as flipping a switch. “The recommendation is to turn off all non-essential lights from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.,” Hannah says.
Spring migration tends to run from March 1 to June 15, and fall migration from August 1 to November 30. During those months, it’s especially important to turn out lights.
That said, it’s a good idea to be mindful of outdoor lighting regardless of whether it’s migration season. “Collisions with windows can happen year-round, so it helps to reduce artificial lights at night throughout the year,” Hannah says.
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What Should Businesses and Building Owners Do?
For business and building owners, Audubon has a more detailed list of recommendations. They include turning off exterior decorative lighting, turning off spotlights and floodlights, reducing lobby and atrium lighting, down-shielding exterior lighting to reduce horizontal glare and light directed upward, and avoiding over-lighting when installing new lights.
For those interested in doing even more, take the Lights Out pledge and visit the Lights Out Program’s page for even more information about initiatives and how to get involved.
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- Why Do Some Birds Migrate While Others Don’t?
About the Expert
Hannah Partridge is the Community Action Manager for the National Audubon Society. She is Audubon’s first point of contact for bird-safe buildings, and she conducted portions of her graduate research on the topic of window collisions.
